Joseph C. Lincoln wrote an article in August of 1926 for the Cape Cod Magazine entitled “The Saving of a Landmark”. He wrote, quote –

Every Cape Codder and every lover of the Cape may therefore congratulate himself or herself upon the fact that the old Atwood House in Chatham has been acquired by the Chatham Historical Society and is to be preserved as it is, and as it was, an example of the kind of home which our great-great-great-grandfather built and occupied in the days when Cape Cod was a part of Britain's New England colonies and the dream of a declaration of independence would have been a terrible nightmare not to be mentioned outside the family.

The Atwood House stands on Atwood Street in the town of Chatham and has stood there since 1752, or thereabouts. There is no record of the exact date of its building, but in “The History of Chatham” by William C. Smith, we find it stated that “By deed dated February 13, 1752, Joseph Atwood purchased of Colonel Elisha Doane of Eastham a tract of thirty acres between the road to the Stage” – “Stage” was the old name for what is still “Stage Wharf” – “and Mitchell's River, formerly the William Mitchell farm.”

A bit further in this article, Lincoln continues, quote -

the third Joseph Atwood, was born in February 1720 and moved to Chatham, where he married Deborah Sears in 1742. (Abigail, Apphiah, Bethia and Deborah, a fine collection of old-fashioned Puritan names, those of the Atwood brides!) This Joseph Atwood built the Atwood house. He was a prominent citizen of Chatham, a ship master in foreign commerce, us so many Cape Codders were in those days and for years thereafter. He died in 1794. Since then Atwood has been an influential name in Chatham. Sears Atwood, one of his descendants, married Azubah Collins, (there is another fine flavored name for you!) lived in the old house and raised their seven children there. Everyone of those children - with the exception of Sears, Junior, who died young - settled in the immediate neighborhood, giving the family name to the street and the school which stood thereon. It is said that old Sears Atwood used to boast that he could stand in his door and make all his children hear his voice in their own homes. The voices of deep-sea captains were trained to carry over distance and through weather disturbances.

Since then the old house has remained on Atwood property, although its owners have sometimes been far removed from it and Cape Cod. Now, under a deed of April 12, 1926, Jane Atwood of Beaver, Pennsylvania; John A. Atwood of Beaver; Albert W. Atwood of Princeton, New Jersey; and Edwin H. Atwood of Olean, New York, have conveyed the title to their ancestral home and the land upon which it stands to the Chatham Historical Society. And the old Atwood House, by far the oldest building in Chatham, is, according to the terms of the deed, to be “Conserved for the benefit of all,” and its beauty and that of its site are not to be impaired.

That there is such beauty no lover of the Colonial home will contradict. The house is low, gray-shingled and of the purest Colonial architecture. Its rooms are small, but charming, and have never been spoiled by so-called “improvement.” During the current summer it will be, as it has been for several summers, occupied by a New York lady as a tea house, but in the fall the Historical Society will take possession, furnish it as nearly as possible as it was furnished when used, and throw it open to the public as a historical museum and memory of the fine old Puritan Cape Codders who built it.