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HINGHAM

A STORY OF ITS EARLY SETTLEMENT AND LIFE,

ITS ANCIENT LANDiMARKS, ITS HISTORIC

SITES AND BUILDINGS.

ILLUSTRATED

Published by
OLD COLONY CHAPTER

Daughters of the American Revolution
19 II

THE N-^W YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDEN Fr!'^'OATIOill8.

R 1912 L

Old Colony Chapter
Daughters of the American Revoluttoa

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

HISTORIC HINGHAM ....
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE .
THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM
THE HOME MEADOWS . . .

DERBY ACADEMY

SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM

HINGHAM FARMS

SOME HINGHAM GARDENS .
THE NEGRO GALLERIES . . .

COLONIAL HOUSES

DR. EBENEZER GAY ....

THE GAY HOUSE ON NORTH STREET,

HINGHAM, AND THE OLD TORY .

THE HAZLITTS

THE THAXTER, NOW THE WOMPATUCK

CLUB, HOUSE

A TRUE FISH STORY

THE CHIME OF BELLS

THE HINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTS AND

CRAFTS

Martha A. L. Lane
Walter L. Bouvd
Francis II. Lincoln
Louis C. Cornish
Mary C. Rohbins
Francis II. Lincoln
John D. Long .
Dallas Lore Sharp
Mary C. Rohhins .
Charles H. Porter

Martin Gay
Benjamin F. Stevens

Francis II. Lincoln .
Helen Whiion
Dallas Lore Sharp .

Susan IS. Willard

PAGE

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59
68
71
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81
99

102
106

110
116

118

120

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INTRODUCTION.

FOR two hundred and fifty years after the settlement of Hing-
ham the favorite method of approach was by water, and
there is still no better way to get a first glimpse of the town.
Sailing south from Boston one enters a cup-shaped arm of the
bay, dotted with tiny islands, and well-sheltered from the fury
of eastern gales. Along its green shores lie the scattered houses
of summer colonies and, at the bottom of the cup, are a few
wharves and old buildings that date back to the time when Hing-
ham's mackerel fleet was her chief pride. No longer does the
daily steamboat make its sinuous way amid the vexing shallows
of the harbor, but the varied craft of the Hingham Yacht Club
give a touch of life to the tranquil scene and keep it still allied
with the former aspect of the place.

It was from the open waters of Massachusetts Bay that the
earliest settlers of the town viewed their new home. The
rounded hill of Crow Point was the first land sighted by them,
and probably was the spot first trodden by their ocean-weary
feet. To-day, girdled by attractive summer houses and crowned
by the links of the Golf Club, it is one of the most beautiful
localities for miles around. Doubtless the prospect of a safe
anchorage in the inner basin led those early voyagers into Bare
Cove, now Hingham harbor. If they came in the late afternoon
and were so fortunate as to see, over the shoulder of Weary-all
Hill, the splendid coloring for which Hingham sunsets are

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6 INTRODUCTION.

famous, they must have felt that Heaven smiled upon their
enterprise.

The modern traveler who comes into the town by train
or motor loses something of this picturesqueness, although if he
enter from the south, down the six-mile drive from Accord
Pond, he has little reason to complain. From the exquisite
vistas through the trees on the Mount Blue road to the graceful
willows " over the river," or down the wide avenue that leads
through South Hingham and its successive " plains," he faces a
series of charming views. Arrived at the lower level of the
main street he finds himself beneath the interlacing branches of
tall elms, and between rows of dignified old houses which give
to the town its air of comfort and well-being. At his right, as
he approaches the railway station, stands the Old Meeting-
house, the most treasured of all Hingham's possessions. A
few rods farther on is Derby Academy, justly famous in the
early years of the nation, and still holding its place in the
respect as well as in the afiection of the community. Recent
improvements have done much to beautify the interior of the
building and to make it worthy of the high ideals for which
the school stands. Beyond the Academy, under the great elm
that throws its shadow far across the square toward the railroad,
is a quaint old house interesting for its connection with colonial
history. Here were quartered some of the exiled Acadian s
brought from Grand Pre and its neighborhood after the Nova
Scotia expedition of 1755. Around the corner may be found
the headquarters of the Arts and Crafts Society, which has
already made for itself an enviable reputation. From the top

INTRODUCTION. 7

of the hill on the north side of the square one gets an excellent
idea of the topography of this section of the town and of its
natural beauty. The blue harbor on the east, the softly rounded
hills to the north and west, with the wide expanse of the cadet
camp at one's feet make a picture not readily to be forgotten.

If the visitor to Hingham enters the town by train from
Boston, he first crosses the meadows, above and below West
Hingham, known throughout the region for the forget-me-nots
which grow all summer in great profusion. Originally brought
by Allan Gay, a Hingham artist, from the forest of Fontaine-
bleau, they have spread up and down the brooks, bravely with-
standing the icy winters and the ruthless handling of the boys
who gather them for sale in the square.

There are three other approaches to the town — one over
the old west turnpike, coming in over Back River bridge and
passing along the reservation and the thickly clustered houses
of the district spoken of by old residents as " up in town ; "
another, branching from the turnpike at the bridge and skirting
a lovely stretch of woodland and shore ; and lastly, tlie roads
from Nantasket and Cohasset which lie to the eastward. From
the top of Old Colony Hill the horseshoe curve, begun at Crow
Point, is completed by the beautiful Martin's Lane and World's
End drive.

The day of Hingham's commercial prosperity is in the
past, and those who love her truly have no wish to see the
modern equivalent in its place. The white sails of the fishing
vessels, the carefully tended fields and farms, the wholesome
smell of new-cut wood and clean cordage, — these were things

8 INTRODUCTION.

beautiful in themselves, and they gave the flavor of healthy
activity to a community proud of its industry and its inde-
pendence. Prosperity, in the business sense of money-making,
is no longer to be coveted for a town the charm of which lies in
the quiet beauty and peacefulness of its natural endowment.
The ideal Hingham will continue to provide, as does a well-kept
home, for the refreshment and reinforcement of those who find
chief scope for their commercial activity outside her borders, and
true prosperity will mean a conservation of all that gives such a
renewal of strength and life.

More than two hundred and fifty years ago, Johnson, in his
"Wonder AVorking Providence," wrote of the town, "Its form is
somewhat intricate to describe by reason of the Sea's wasting
crookes where it beats upon a mouldering shore," nor is the task
to-day a simple one. The lapse of nearly three centuries has
not changed to an appreciable degree the physical characteristics
of Hingham or the nature of her inheritance. There are still
" wasting crookes," and the famous first settler who " would
speak his mind " could easily find his counterpart in that
respect to-day. Sturdy independence has always been a dis-
tinguishing quality of Hingham stock ; joined with a brave
liberalism in thought and a cautious conservatism in action, it
has made her children justly proud of their birthright. Well
may they take satisfaction in the thought that they can trace so
directly their descent from those pioneers who founded a new
freedom in the wilderness across the sea.

Martha A. L. Lane.

HISTORIC HINGHAM.

H INGHAM, with its Old England name carrying us back even
a step farther than the earliest days of New England chroni-
cle and legend, with its traditional families, themselves indicative
of its own origin, its yet numerous venerable houses, its elm and
maple shaded streets, sometimes straight and broad, then again
narrow and winding, adorned here with beautiful lawns and artis-
tic modern residences, and there quaint with the great, square,
yellow, white-trimmed colonial mansion or the low, gabled,
unpainted home of the olden days, is one of the towns the story
of which, touching here upon the Puritan, and there upon the
Pilgrim, is coeval with and, indeed, not an unimportant part of
that of the Commonwealth.

As early as 1633 and 1634 a few families made here their
abiding-places ; but the settlement leading to the assignment of
lots was made in 1635, when Peter Hobart, the revered minister
thereafter for more than forty-three years, landed near the foot of
what is now Ship Street, at the head waters of the mill stream,
and held divine worship under the shade of a noble tree now
gone. The place, heretofore a plantation known as Bare Cove,
became a town under the name of Hingham, there being but ten
or eleven older in the State and only one in Plymouth County.

The earliest settlements were made along what is now North
Street, formerly Town Street, and soon extended west as far as
the end of the swamp, thence through West Street and over Fort
Hill, from which the adjoining settlement at Weymouth, or Wessa-
gusset, was reached. The south side of the town brook also, now

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10 HISTORIC H INGHAM.

called South Street, was then called Town Street ; and houses
were soon built at intervals between Fort Hill and Main Street, the
lower part of which became, early in our history. Bachelors' Row.
Main Street throughout its length, with but little variation from
its present location, was occupied upon either side at a very early
day ; and there are few finer avenues than this, especially where
it widens into a modern boulevard at South Hinsfham. Broad
Cove Lane, now Lincoln Street, from which by a grassy lane Otis
Hill — then Weary-all Hill — was reached, was also occupied by
some of the first comers. The lower part of Main Street, near
the square, then followed for a short distance two separate courses,
— one over a hill now partially dug away, and then extending a
short distance westward from where Derby Academy stands, and
the other around the base of the same hill. The two united and
became one about opposite the location of Loring Hall. Upon
the hill stood the first meeting-house, a plain, small log building,
with a palisade around it for defence against the Indians. At a
distance of a few rods, at most, the first school maintained by the
town kept company with the house of worship ; while around
them both stood the rough stones erected to the memory of our
dead forefathers. The remains of the occupants of this our first
cemetery are gathered in the old fort, in which stands a plain
granite shaft erected as a memorial to the first settlers. This
fort, in an excellent state of preservation, is in the Hingham
Cemetery, and not far from the Old Meeting-house. It was one
of three built at an early day, supposedly about 1675, when King
Philip was ravaging the settlements from the Atlantic coast to the
Connecticut River and beyond. The other two were situated,
one on Fort Hill and the other on the lower plain, not far from
where now stands the public library. In this connection it may

HISTORIC HINGHAM. 11

be as well to relate that during Philip's War, on April 20, 1676,
several houses at South Hino;ham and " Over the River " were
burned by the red men.

It is impossible to name in a short article like the present
all of the early families who came to Hingham, but among them
were the Lincolns, Herseys, Cushings, Jacobs, Wilders, Burrs,
Thaxters, Spragues, Chubbucks, Andrews, Bates, Stoddards,
Stowells, Gardners, Hobarts, Beals, Towers, Leavitts, Ripleys,
Joys, Marshes, Lanes, and Whitons ; and the descendants of
most of them are still found among the substantial residents of
our community.

The original limits of Hingham extended from the beautiful
blue bay on the north to Accord Pond on the south, where it
bounded upon Plymouth Colony. The westerly limit was
fixed in part by Weymouth Back River, and the easterly by
Bound Brook, thus including Cohasset, which was set ofi" in
1770. Hull, too, was, as now, one of our immediate neighbors,
and was separated by a salt branch of Weir River.

The early inhabitants were mainly farmers, and were an
industrious and thrifty class, who soon developed many other
industries. In 1645 a corn-mill was erected at or near the
location of that still singing its cheery song, and another a few
rods further up the stream. Early in the town's history there
was a fulling-mill near the pond at South Hingham now known
by that name. Saw-mills and corn-mills Avere numerous ; and
our shores were soon lined with ship yards, where many stalwart
vessels were built. There were salt-works at several places ;
and iron foundries, box factories, and bucket factories employed
large numbers of people in the succeeding years. As early as
1639 the records tell of the loss of a small ten-ton vessel belong-

12 HISTORIC HINGHAM.

ing to John Palmer, of Broad Cove. Subsequently considerable
commerce was carried on with the West Indies ; and before the
close of the last century the town had become celebrated for its
mackerel fishery, which, like many of its other industries, is now
entirely a thing of the past.

In 1637 Hino;ham furnished six men for what is known as
the Pequot War, and from that day she has never been backward
in responding to the military calls of the country. Anthony
Eames was the first military commander ; and Joshua Hobart, a
brother of the minister and an energetic man, was captain before
and during Philip's War. At this later period, besides the forts
already mentioned, there were so-called " garrison houses."
One of these, standing in the " pass " between Massachusetts and
Plymouth, was that of Captain John Jacob, a distinguished man
and soldier of the period. John Tower and his sons defended
another near Tower's Bridge ; and the Andrews house, recently
belonirinsf to Miss Joanna Lincoln and standino; next the Cush-
ing House, was a third. It is supposed to be the oldest house
in the town.

In the several French wars men from this town served con-
spicuously and bravely. In the expeditions against the Spanish
in the West Indies in 1740 and 1762 a number of Hingham men
participated. The town was foremost among those which led
and served in the Ke volution, and many of her sons took distin-
guished parts in the long struggle. Most conspicuous of all was
Major-general Lincoln, who had been secretary of the Provincial
Congress and a leader in shaping the practical preparations to
resist British aggression. Engao-ed in the war at various times
were a number of companies ; and probably over one thousand
Hingham men participated in it, first and last. A small engage-

HISTORIC HINGHAM. 13

ment took place between the British and the Americans on May
21, 1775, the firing on the patriots' part being from our shore, near
the mouth of Weymovith River, wliile the English were on Grape
Island. The latter were soon driven off.

The inhabitants in 1776 numbered probably from 2,000 to
2,500. After the war the town grew slowly but steadily until
about 1860, since which time its population of between four and
five thousand has not materially increased.

Among the most interesting buildings in this country is the
Old Meeting-house, erected in 1681. It has been occupied unin-
terruptedly as a house of worship for more than two hundred
years, besides being the place in early days for holding town
meetings. The meeting-house of the Second Congregational
Society at South Hingham is not only interesting as dating back
to the early days before the Revolution, but also for the noble
men who have ministered therein. Near the Hingham depot is
the New North Church, or, more properly, the meeting-house of
the Third Congregational Society, erected early in the present
century and the religious home of General Lincoln, Governor
Andrew, and Governor Long. A large congregation worships in
the Roman Catholic Church, built in 1872, directly opposite the
station.

On North Street, a few rods west of Lincoln Street, is the
Universalist house of worship, occupied by an earnest and enthu-
siastic society ; and, still farther on, the Methodists meet in the
building devoted by them to the service of God. Standing back
from Main Street and half hidden by great trees is the white
church of the Baptists, built in 1829 ; while nearly opposite
Water Street is the modest chapel of the Episcopalians, with
attractive grounds and shrubbery. Centre Hingham has within

14 HISTORIC H IN GRAM.

its limits the church of the Evangelical Congregational Society,
erected in 1848. At South Hingham, on Gardner Street, an
undenominational society meets in a small building used as a
chapel ; and on High Street, near the Weymouth line, there is a
Second Advent church. Among the other public buildings in the
town are Wilder Memorial Hall, Grand Army Hall, Derby
Academy, the spacious Armory, the Public Library, Agricultural
Hall, Loring Hall, and the High and Grammar Schoolhouses.

In early times packets carried men and merchandise to and
from Boston ; but these were long since supplanted by steam-
boats, which for many years added to the delights of a resi-
dence in a place charming alike for its natural beauties, its
historical associations, its simple manners, and its comfortable
homes. The New York, New Haven & Hartford Eailroad now
controls the old South Shore Company which, since 1849, has
made it possible to enjoy a home in the country and at the same
time to carry on a business in the great city.

A sketch of the town, however slight, would be sadly want-
ing, were no reference made to the beautiful cemeteries at Fort
Hill, Hingham Centre, South Hingham, and to the Hingham
Cemetery itself. In this, the largest of them all, lies what is
mortal of Major-general Lincoln and Governor John A. Andrew.
A fine monument marks the grave of the former, and a remarka-
bly life-like statue stands beside that of the latter.

Religious bigotry has never found a footing in Hingham.
In the old days there were many bonds of sj^mpathy between our
people and those of the Plymouth settlements. Indeed, so
numerous were the intermarriages that our community was
almost as much Pilgrim as Puritan in blood as well as in thouo'ht.
Into the anti-slavery agitation of the years that now seem so long

HISTORIC RING HAM. 16

ago the people of Hingham entered with unflagging zeal ; and,
when the great war for freedom needed the devotion and self-sac-
rifice of her sons, hundreds of them responded to the nation's call,
and now sleep quietly in her holiest soil, remembered with love
and gratitude in that they served and died that their brothers
might be free and that the Great Republic might survive, a beacon
light to all the peoples of the earth.

Walter L. Bouvf .

During the War of 1812 the countryside was frequently
thrown into a panic by the approach of British warships. It
was on one such occasion that two young girls at Scituate actually
frightened away a hostile vessel by parading up and down the
beach with fife and drum. Hidden from view, their shrill clamor
led the captain to believe that a force was gathering against him ;
and, hoisting sail, he departed. At another time the women and
children of Hingham were alarmed by the appearance of a strange
ship in the harbor. Rumors of bombardment drove them to their
homes. One energetic woman, however, rang the bell of the
Old Church until she had succeeded in calling the scattered men
together to defend the town. The tradition stops here, although
her sons, well known afterward as the firm of R. & C. Lane,
doubtless remembered their mother's exploit with pride.

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

THE "Old Meeting-house" was built in
1681. It was the second house for
public worship in the town. The first meet-
ing-house was built soon after the gathering
of the church in 1635, and was on the
main street, on a hill in front of the present
site of the Derby Academy. For forty-five
years after the settlement of the town it
was the only house for public worship.
As the town srew in numbers, it was found
necessary to build a larger one to accom-
modate its inhabitants. After a contro-
versy of more than a year, in which the governor and magistrates
took part, the location of the new house was settled ; and on
July 8, 1681, Captain Joshua Hobart conveyed to the town
by deed of gift the site for the meeting-house, which was
the one upon which it now stands. The frame was raised on the
26th, 27th, and 28th of July, 1681 ; and it was opened for
public worship Jan. 8, 1681-82. It cost the town £430 and
the old house, the necessary amount being raised by a rate which
had been made in October, 1680. Parts of the first meeting-
house were used in the construction of the new one. For over
two centuries it has stood, substantially the same as when first
erected. It is true that it has been enlarged twice, and such
repairs and minor changes as were necessary have been made
from time to time ; but all the original timbers of its frame are

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still there, sound as when they were first hewn out of the solid
oak by the strokes of the broad-axe, the marks of which can be
plainly seen on every hand.

Its antiquity marks it as one of the principal objects of
interest in Hino-ham. The most exhaustino; research enables us
to say with entire confidence that the meeting-house of the First
Parish in Hingham is the oldest house for public worship in the
United States which stands upon its original site and continues
to be used for the purpose for which it was erected.

There were originally galleries on one side and both ends,
the pulpit being on the side next to the cemetery. There was no
ceiling until 1731, but all was open to the rafters. Through the
small circular aperture, now seen in the centre of the ceiling, the
bell-rope is lowered to the main floor of the house, in order to
make the bell more accessible in case of sudden alarm. It is
drawn up into the attic while services are held. The occasion
for such use has long since passed away, yet the custom of
lowering the rope is still continued. The square pane of glass
in the ceiling was placed there to enable the sexton, while ring-
ing the bell from the attic floor, to see when the minister had
taken his place in the pulpit, which was his signal to cease ring-
ing. The original dimensions of the house were fifty-five feet in
length, forty-five feet in breadth, and the height of the posts
"twenty or one-and-twenty feet." This width included what is
now contained between the two side galleries, the wall against
which the present pulpit stands and the opposite wall being in
their original places. In 1730 an addition of fourteen feet was
built upon the side next to the cemetery ; and in 1755 a similar
addition of fourteen feet was built on the side next to the street,
these being the spaces covered by the two side galleries. At the

18 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

time of the last addition, 1755, the present pulpit was built and
placed nearly in its present position. Dr. Gay, the minister,
preached from it the first time after it was built, from Nehemiah
viii. 4 : " And Ezra, the scribe, stood upon a pulpit of wood,
which they had made for the purpose."

In the same year, 1755, the first pews were built; namely,
two rows of square pews all around the house, except the spaces
occupied by the pulpit and the aisles leading from the porches.
There was a pew in front of the pulpit, known as the " Elders*
Pew," or "Elderly Seat," and an enclosed seat or pew in front of
the Elders' pew, facing the broad aisle, for the deacons. The
two latter pews were removed in 1828. In the central space or
body of the house were long oak seats for the occupancy of
males on one side of the broad aisle and of females on the other.
These seats were removed from time to time, until the whole
space was covered by pews. In 1799 five pews were built in
the front of each side gallery, and in 1804 the same number in
the rear of those first built, making twenty in all. At subse-
quent dates all the side gallery pews were removed and new
pews were built in their place ; namely, eight in the eastern
gallery in 1854, the same number in the western gallery in
1855, and in 1857 four were built in the eastern and four in the
western gallery. In 1859 four pews were built in the front
gallery, and in 1868 four more had been built in the same
gallery.

In 1822 stoves were introduced for the purpose of heating
the house. It seems incredible that our ancestors could have sat
through two long services in a New England climate for so many
years with no heat other than that obtained from foot-stoves or
similar portable appliances.

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 19

There was no adequate provision for lighting the house after
(lark until 1870, when oil lamps were put in. These served
their purpose until 1900, when they gave way to electric lights.

In 1869 the present pews were built on the floor of the
house, furnaces were substituted for stoves, and expensive repairs
were made. Under the southwest corner-stone a lead box was
deposited, containing appropriate memorials connected with the
history of the parish. Appropriate services were held to com-
memorate the reopening of the meeting-house Sept. 8, 1869.

Aug. 8, 1881, very impressive and interesting exercises
were held in the meeting-house, in commemoration of the two
hundredth anniversary of the building of the house. Mr.
Charles Eliot Norton, a lineal descendant of the second minister.
Rev. John Norton, during whose ministry it was built, delivered
the principal address. Music of the various periods since the
erection of the meeting-house was represented by the " raising
of the tune " by means of a " pitch-pipe " and " deaconing " of
the hymn, with singing by the congregation ; the use of various
musical instruments in connection with a large choir, composed
of nearly all those living who had ever sat in the " singing
seats ; " and the organ and quartette choir. At that time a tablet
of brass, set in mahogany and lettered in antique style, was
placed on the wall on the westerly side of the pulpit as a perma-
nent memorial. It has the following inscription :

•• Let the Work of our Fathers stand."

Ministers.

PETER HOBART 1635-1678-9

JOHN NORTON 1678-1716

EBENEZER GAY 1718-1787

HENRY WARE 1787-1805

20 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

JOSEPH RICHARDSON 1806-1871

CALVIN LINCOLN 1855-1881

EDW AUGUSTUS HORTON 1877-1880

HIRAM PRICE COLLIER 1882-1888

JOHN WILLIAM DAY 1890-1899

Teacher.
ROBERT PECK 1638-1641

This church, was gathered in 1635. The frame
of this meeting-house was raised oa the twenty-
sixth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth days of
July, 1681 ; and the house was completed and
opened for public worship on the eighth of
January, 1681-82. It cost the town £430 and
the old house.

Mr. Day's ministry closed in 1899, and Rev. Louis Craig
Cornish, the tenth minister, was settled in 1900.

Jan. 8, 1882, a discourse was delivered by Rev. Edward A.
Horton, at that time the only surviving minister, on the occasion
of the two hundredth anniversary of the opening of the meeting-
house for public worship.

There is some doubt about the general appearance of the
early New England meeting-houses ; but, from several woodcuts
which have been preserved of those in other places and from
some early memorials of towns in which the earlier buildings
are not now standing, there is strong presumption that our Hing-
ham meeting-house is of a type of architecture which was not
unusual, and, perhaps, more commonly in use than any other.
The nearly square box, with a pyramidal roof surmounted by a
belfry with " banisters " around it, a steeple in the centre, pro-
jecting porches, two regular rows of windows with diamond

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 21

panes of glass (formerly set in lead) interrupted on one side by
a pair of windows at a different level, which mark the position
of the pulpit, constitute the customary features of these earlier
houses. All these are seen in our old meeting-house, almost the
only one left to remind us of that simplicity which our fathers
thought becoming to their houses of worship.

In 1791, one hundred and ten years after the house was
built, its form and appearance were nearly lost to us of later
generations. Indeed, the whole structure was dangerously near
annihilation. The following notes tell the story :

In June, 1791, it was voted "that the meeting-house be
repaired in the following manner, viz. : that the roof be carried
up to a point the same pitch as the south-west roof is over the
centre of the house ; and that the ridge extend from the north-
west side of the house to the south-east, the whole width of the
house ; and that where the porch now stands a tower be built on
which the bell shall be hung, and such work on the top of the
tower as shall hereafter be ordered." In February, 1792, it was
voted " that a tower be built at the south-west side of the meet-
ing-house for the bell to hang on ; " and, in the following March,
" that the meeting-house roof be taken off, and a proper pitch
roof made to correspond with the tower that is to be built, and
to have proper covings." Subsequently it was voted "to leave
it to the judgment of the committee to form the roof as they
shall judge best." In April, 1792, the committee reported that
the top of the meeting-house was so defective that it was not
best to repair it without taking off the roof ; and the report was
accepted. In August of the same year it was voted that the vote
for taking off the roof " be dissolved ; " and at the same meeting
it was voted " to take down the meeting-house, and build a new

22 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

one similar to a plan exhibited in the meeting which is on file,
60 in favor of it, and 28 against it." Fortunately, however, in
November, 1792, it was voted " not to take down the meeting-
house and build a new one on any principles," but " to repair
the meeting-house in its present form." Extensive repairs were
made in 1793, in accordance with votes passed to carry out this
latter vote ; and the old meeting-house was saved.

Visitors who see the two square pews with their "banister"
tops, which are preserved in the attic as relics, and which are of
the style of those removed in 1869, often express regret that the
old pews were not allowed to remain, and so add to the quaint-
ness of the interior. For the purposes of an antique relic it is a
matter for regret ; but the exigencies of the situation required
their removal, as the following extract from an article in the
Hingham Journal of Sept. 3, 1869, written by a member of the
Committee on Repairs, clearly states :

" Several articles have appeared in the columns of this paper
during the time the work of repair has been going on, evincing
no small degree of interest in relation to the manner in which the
committee who had the work in charge proposed to accomplish it,
and it is not surprising that therein fears were expressed that
something would be done in the progress of the work to mar
the general character of the building ; and the committee ought
to feel under some obligation to this expression of public feeling,
in restraining any tendency in this direction, if, unhappily, it
had any foothold among them. It was no mere desire for change
or to conform to modern fashions of architecture which led to the
work of repair, but an apparent necessity for making essential
repairs had been felt for some years. This, at last, led to an
examination of the floor of the house : and this examination

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 23

revealed the fact that, if the parish wished to preserve their
house, they must forthwith commence the work of repairs, and
that nothing short of an entire new floor would answer the pur-
pose. This rendered the removal of the pews necessary, and the
removal involved their destruction. There are many associations
connected with those old pews, full of the deepest interest to
those occupying them ; and nothing but the sternest necessity
could have reconciled the owners to their sacrifice. Those old
square pews were not put in the house when it was first built, but
were placed there when the last addition was made in 1755."

The first reference in the records of the parish to the musical
part of the service is in 1763, when a meeting was held "in order
to see whether the Parish will assign any particular place, seat or
seats, where a number of persons skilled in Musick may set
together that so that part of Religious exercise may be performed
with decency and order ; " and it was voted " that Mr. Gay be
desired to invite one or more to set in ye seat behind the Deacons'
to strike first in singing," and "that a part of the womans' front
seat and ye second seat, not exceeding one-half of each, be sepa-
rated for ye use of the singers." In May, 1778, it was voted
"that the two hindermost seats in the body of the Meeting-house,
both men's & women's, be appropriated to the use of the singers ; "
in September of the same year, " that the three hindermost seats
in the Meeting-house be appropriated to the singers, and that they
have liberty to make doors & flaps of bords to each seat ; " and
November, 1779, "to indulge the singers a Liberty to set in
the front gallery where it best suited them." The first record
of a musical instrument is in the vote of March 9, 1801, when it
was voted "that the Parish be at the expense of purchasing a
Bass-viol and commit it to Barnabas Lincoln, to be used by him

24 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

or his family in the meeting-house to assist the melody, and that
Mr. Barnabas Lincoln be invited to assist in leading the bass."
The bass-viol was continued in use from this time until the intro-
duction of an organ in 1867, and other instruments were used at
various times. Mr. David A. Hersey played upon the bass-viol
for nearly fifty years, and Mr. Sidney Sprague upon the flute for
thirty-six years, their services ending in 1867.

In 1867 an organ was placed in the front gallery. Previ-
ously for many years the " singing seats " were in this gallery.
In 1869, at the time of the general repairs, the location of the
organ was changed to the platform on the easterly side of the
pulpit, and in 1870 a new organ was purchased and placed in
the same position.

In 1902 Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Clapp, members of the parish,
expressed a wish to place in the meeting-house a new organ as a
memorial gift to their son, who died in 1901, and who had been
an active member of the choir. A portion of the eastern gallery
was removed, and the organ was placed in the northerly corner
of the meeting-house. It was dedicated July 31, 1902. Upon
the organ is a brass plate with the following inscription :

THIS ORGAN WAS GIVEN TO

•THE • FIRST-PARISH • HINGHAM •

BY MR. & MRS. EDWIN CLAPP

IN MEMORY OF THEIR SON

•DAVIS -BATES •CLAPP ■

■AD- MCMII'

On Sept. 24, 1905, there was used for the first time a read-
ing desk, the gift of friends of Joseph H. French, as a memorial
of him. Upon it is a brass plate with the following inscription:

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 25

THIS READING DESK COMMEMORATES

THE HONORABLE LIFE AND CHEERFUL FAITH OF

JOSEPH HUMPHREY FRENCH

1820-1905

WHO DURING THIRTY YEARS

WORSHIPED GOD IN THE OLD MEETING HOUSE.

A bronze tablet in memory of Wilmon W. Blackmar, placed
on the southerly interior wall of the meeting-house by the Massa-
chusetts Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United States,
was unveiled with suitable exercises on Sunday afternoon, June
9, 1907.

On Oct. 11, 1908, there was used for the first time a stand
for the baptismal bowl. Upon it is a silver plate with the fol-
lowing inscription :

TO THE HONORED MEMORY OF

DEMERICK MARBLE

BORN OCT. 7, 1819 DIED FEB. 22, 1898

BAPTISED IN THIS OLD

MEETING HOUSE OCT. 23, 1823.

GIVEN BY HIS SONS

1908.

Both the first house and the present one were surmounted
by a bell. The bell now in use was placed in the belfry July 26,
1822.

For some years before the Revolutionary "War there was a
clock in the attic, the dial of which was in the dormer window
facing the street. For some unknown reason this was removed.
The time was originally marked by an hour glass which stood
upon the pulpit. The clock now on the front of the gallery was
placed there by subscription in 1835, and set in motion on the

26 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

morning of the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of
the town.

Town meetino;s were held in the meeting-house from 1682,
when it was first opened for public worship, until 1780, and
from that date until 1827, either in this house or the meeting-
house at South Hingham.

The parish is of the Unitarian denomination. Originally a
Puritan church and congregation, it changed gradually in its
belief, under the liberal ministry of Dr. Gay, about the middle
of the eighteenth century, long before the time when the Uni-
tarians became an established denomination in this country. It
continues to be active and prosperous, and maintains public Wor-
ship in the meeting-house every Sunday throughout the year.

For the uses of the Sunday-school and other purposes con-
nected with the religious and charitable work and social life of
the parish, the Parish House, which stands on Main Street,
nearly opposite the meeting-house, was built in 1891.

Nov. 6, 1910, there was a service of dedication by the
Sunday-school, in the Parish House, of a peal of tubular bells,
to be used in calling together and dismissing the Sunday-school.
The bells are enclosed in a mahogany case and were the gift of
Mrs. George E. Wales, as a memorial to her daughter, formerly
a member of the school. Upon the case is a brass plate with
the following inscription :

TO THE GLORY OF GOD

AND IN LOVING MEMORY OF

ELEANOR ELIZABETH GARDNER

Bom June 14th, 1891 Died June 19th, 1905

E'en as she trod that day to God, so walked she fronn her birth —
In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 27

The limits of this sketch do not permit any extended obser-
vations of a sentimental character concerning this unique relic of
antiquity ; but for those whose ancestors for seven or eight gen-
erations have continuously worshipped within its walls, through
two centuries or more, it is filled with associations which no
words can express. Fortunately preserved by the wiser second
thought of those who would have replaced it with a more modern
structure more than a century ago, scorched by the heat of a
burning building on one side a half century ago, and threatened
by a similar occurrence on another side since that time, it still
stands an inspiration and comfort to those in whose keeping it is
to-day. The inscription adopted by the parish for its seal
reflects also the sentiment of all who cherish the memorials of
earlier times, " Let the Work of our Fathers stand."

Well may we say with the Psalmist, " This is the hill where
God desireth to dwell in ; yea, the Lord will dwell in it forever."

Francis H. Lincoln.

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

A FEW families are known to have come to the shores of
Bare Cove in 1633, and are believed to have been the first
settlers. Others came in 1634. The deed to the whole adjacent
territory given by the Indians thirty years later fixes this as the
year of the foundation. " Certain Englishmen," it tells us, " did
come to inhabit in the days of Chickatabut, our father chief
sachem, and by free consent of our father did set down upon
his land in the year of our Lord God one thousand six hundred
and thirty-four." In 1635 some forty-eight settlers came, and
perhaps as many more in the next three years. Their names
are given us upon a list, made by Mr. Cushing, the third town
clerk, "of such persons as came out of the town of Hingham,
and the towns adjacent, in the county of Norfolk, in the king-
dom of Eno-land into New Enj^land and settled in Hingham."
" The whole number who came out of Norfolk, chiefly from
Hingham and its vicinity, from 1633 to 1639, and settled in
Hingham," he tells us further, "was two hundred and six."

Probably somewhat enlarged by additions from other
sources, this little company of perhaps two hundred and fifty
souls apportioned land in 1635, settled a minister, "gathered a
parish," built a meeting-house, erected their settlement into a
Plantation, thus gaining representation in the General Court,
and named their new home Hingham in love for the old home
across the sea.

Practical considerations no doubt determined the selection
of the site. The bay gave good fishing, and the flats yielded

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THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 29

plenty of shellfish. Then as now the low rolling hills stretched
pleasantly inland from the harbors edge. There were sightly
and well sheltered building spots. The broad open spaces
offered easy tillage and pasture. There was an abundant supply
both of wood and of water. The site could be readily defended,
and provided a convenient waterway to Boston, already a con-
siderable town and well fortified. Not least of the advantages
was a safe and sufficient anchorage in the landlocked harbor
with the open sea just beyond it. Possibly another considera-
tion may have had weight. The distance from Boston insured
to the Plantation a considerable independence in the management
of its own affairs. Such may well have been the reasons which
led to the selection of the shallow bay at the lower end of what
is now Boston Harbor for the site of the Plantation of New
Hingham.

"With this said, there remains the more interesting question
what brought these people across the sea? Why did they leave
well established homes in the old country to endure the dangers
and discomforts of life on the edge of an untrodden wilderness ?
What tempted them to brave the little traveled and perilous
North Atlantic? In short, what were the reasons for the migra-
tion? Although it cannot be briefly stated, the answer is plain.
To understand it one must journey at least in fancy to far distant
places and times, and see the erection of this plantation in the
long perspective of history.

Our journey will take us over the sea to England, and from
London northward and eastward through the wide level lands of
Essex, and Suffolk, and Norfolk. The New Englander will find
many names made familiar by long association, witnesses to the
influence of this region upon early New England. Here are

30 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

TVrentham and Ipswich ; there Stoneham, and Yarmouth, Box-
ford, Sudbury, and Lynn. Here, too, is the little town of
Worstead, famed seven centuries ago for its woolen stuffs, a
name that long since became a household word. The entire
region has a character peculiar to itself. From the Thames on
the south to the Wash on the north, these counties form a sort of
promontory, which looks across the troubled Northern Sea to
Holland and Belgium, countries which they much resemble.
The wide marshlands are deserted and again flooded each day by
the tide, and the far-famed Norfolk Broads call to mind the flat
surfaces of the neighboring lowlands.

Not in appearance only is this promontory like the low
countries. From them it drew some of its blood, and much of
its spirit. This easternmost part of England has been called the
hotbed of independency. It was one of the strongholds, if not
the very stronghold, of that independent spirit which in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries established constitu-
tional government in England, and planted it on the edge of the
American wilderness.

Curious testimonies regarding the persistency of Norfolkshire
independency are on record. In passing, two may be selected
from many others. The Evangelist Wesley, writing a century
after our period, said of Norwich, " Whatever be the color of
their religious convictions, they do all dearly love a conflict."
And a modern writer, tracing this independency through the
later infusions of Flemish and Huguenot blood to the early
Scandinavian settlement, ends sadly, "This spirit has persisted
through all changes to the present time, causing Norfolk to be
the greatest hotbed of nonconformity to be found to-day within
the three seas."

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 31

It will be well briefly to trace back this Norfolkshire inde-
pendence that we may see how deep buried its roots are in the past.
In the very early days there are traces of Scandinavian settle-
ment in this region. Later William the Conqueror brought over
weavers from Flanders, who settled in Norwich and laid the
foundation of the city's prosperity. Later by three centuries
Edward the Third invited over Flemish artisans, who settled in
Norwich and its vicinity. Their number was large, and they
intermarried with the people. Later still, wherever these
foreigners had settled there developed a stronghold of the Reform-
ation, and later yet a center of this independency. Perhaps more
potent than the infusion of foreign blood was the persistent
influence and example of the foreigners. Through these centuries
there was constant intercourse with the low countries, the nursery
of European independency, and the foreigners in Norfolk and
vicinity enjoyed substantial privileges that were denied to the
people. So founded and fostered, this independency was shown
in countless ways. To cite only one illustration, about 13G0
Wyclifie spread a knowledge of the Bible. In the persecution
which twenty years later overtook his followers more persons died
at the stake in Norfolk than in all the other counties of England
put together. Among the first was William Carman from
Hingham. In short this eastern promontory of England was a
region possessed from the earliest days of peculiar inheritances
and influences. Norfolk was an important part of this region,
Norwich was the center of it, and some sixteen miles out of
Norwich lay the little town of Hingham.

The facts known to us about the Old Hingham of three cen-
turies ago are like bits of a broken mosaic. Judged by them-
selves, though not without antiquarian interest, they have no

32 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

great meaning. Placed in their pattern, however, they take on
a large significance and are seen to be part of a great design.

The mosaic into which the facts about Old Hinorham should
be fitted is no less than the history of England from 1600 to 1650,
momentous years which witnessed the rise of modern democracy.
The struggle for freedom it is true can be traced far back of this
period. Judged broadly it is as old as time. But in this half
century certain distinct democratic aspirations after freedom
slowly took definite form and were securely established for all
English speaking people. For our purposes modern democracy
began in the last part of Elizabeth's reign, came more plainly
into view in the reigns of James and Charles the First, and was
permanently established in the Commonwealth under Cromwell.
Emerging about 1600, modern democracy took definite form and
grew in strength until it established constitutional government
fifty years later. Such is the pattern of history into which the
story of Ilingham must be fitted to be understood. It was part
of a great movement, the result of a vital struggle in human
development.

Mighty human issues hung upon this contest. Absolute
monarchies were rising on the continent. It was boldly said in
James' Parliament, and probably with truth, that England was
the only country in Europe where the people were fighting for
their riijhts. The issue was clear-cut. On the one side were
the common people, sometimes ignorant and mistaken, but dog-
gedly persistent. The parish clergy often were with them, and
a few of the bishops. On the other side was the Court, compris-
ing the King, the nobles, and the higher clergy. The latter,
themselves mostly of gentle birth and created by the Crown,
naturally were devoted to its interests. The two parties were

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 33

fundamentally at variance. The Court neither understood nor
sympathized with the rising democracy. Its conception of the
state was wholly aristocratic, government from above downward.
The people, impatient of these practices, were groping toward the
modern conception that government rests upon the consent of the
oroverned. The people desired to increase the powers of their
Parliament. The Crown desired to govern without the Parlia-
ment, or with a Parliament made entirely docile. The people
were feeling their way toward constitutional government. The
Court was dreaming of absolute monarchy.

This fundamental disagreement must be kept in mind if the
contest and its importance are to be understood. Unfortunately
the issue is obscured by theological and ecclesiastical quarrels,
and by the romantic appeals of the cavaliers and round-heads.
To look on this controversy, however, as concerned primarily
with churchly or philosophical matters is to profoundly mistake
its meaning. Modern democracy, and nothing less, was emerg-
ing for its age-long struggle against absolutism and privilege.
It is in this broad aspect of the contest that we are all alike
interested.

To understand it we must lay aside our preferences for
churchly ceremonials and definitions of religion. On these
matters we differ. But about the desirability of a truly repre-
sentative government, concerning the people's right to govern
themselves, upon the principle that we will pay no taxes except
those which we ourselves shall levy, about our freedom to think
and act as we please, and to worship God as we deem helpful, on
these essential underlying principles of democracy we all agree.
In England there was a mighty diflerence of opinion about
these matters between 1600 and 1G50. Men fought for them to

34 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

the death and to the death men fought against them. It was for
these great privileges of freedom that together with others the
men of this eastern promontory were contending.

While the contest was so broad in its scope that it is diffi-
cult to show it in any brief compass, there were two points
around which it clearly centered. The Church sought to sup-
press all right of private judgment and independent action.
The Crown sought to tax the people without their consent.
Upon these difficulties the conflicting parties met and met again.
It may be profitable for us to look at two fairly typical
instances where these diiferences are shown, and where the part
played by the eastern promontory is also revealed.

The first instance shows the temper of the Church in regard
to the freedom of the individual. Persecution of independently
minded people gradually increased through the century preced-
ing our period. We find a number of persons burned in Nor-
wich and its vicinity. For example, in 1556 William Carman of
Hingham is burned in Norwich for being " an obstinate heritic,"
and for having in his possession " a Bible, a Testament, and
three Psalters in the Engjlish tongue." In 1593 the Lords
passed a bill making it punishable by death merely " To hold an
opinion contrary to the ecclesiastical establishment of the realm."
The bill did not become law. Keflecting perhaps upon the diffi-
culty of judging unexpressed opinions, the Commons amended
it. As passed the law provided that, "Any person .
writing or saying anything against the Crown in ecclesiastical
causes . . . shall be imprisoned without bail [It should be
remembered what the English prisons were at the time],
and at the end of three months shall be banished from
the kingdom forfeiting all his goods and chattels, and the income

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 35

of his real estate for life. Persons refusing to leave, or return-
ing, shall suffer death as felons." This was for writing or saying
anytJiing against the Crown in ecclesiastical matters. Here
surely was government from above downward ! That the eastern
promontory did not take willingly to this procedure is shown by
the comment of Sir Walter Raleigh. He held that there were
no less than 20,000 persons in this vicinity to whom the law
applied.

The next incident shows the temper of the Crown in the
matter of taxation. It will be remembered that on the death of
Elizabeth in 1603 James the First came to the throne. He
reigned until 1624, when he was succeeded by Charles the First.
During these years continual quarrels arose between the King
and people over the right of the Crown to levy taxes without the
consent of Parliament. For example, King James repi'oves the
Parliament for asking him how the taxes had been expended.
The Parliament then records its conviction that this matter is a
part of its duty and proper privilege. For answer the King
goes to the House of Commons and with his own royal hand
tears from the Book of Records the pages on which the resolu-
tion is written.

The same struggle is shown in a stronger light some years
later. King Charles sends soldiers to arrest the refractory mem-
bers of Parliament. A member sees them coming, locks the
door in their faces, and holds the speaker in his chair w^hile the
Commons passes the famous resolution, declaring that thereafter
any man paying taxes levied without the consent of Parliament
shall be considered an enemy to the liberties of England. This
member was Sir Miles Hobart, representative from Norfolk.

Arrayed against this absolutism in Court and Church was

36 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

the people's independence. Widespread throughout all England,
perhaps this independent spirit found its largest single expres-
sion in southeastern England in the little promontory where our
interests are centered.

Curious incidents show how strong was this temper in Nor-
folk. In Norwich the citizens occasionally rang the church bells
during the sermon time at the cathedral, and even interrupted the
sermon with questions. We find Robert Brown, later known as
the Father of Congregationalism, much in Norwich, where at last
he was imprisoned. As early as 1580, his followers had consid-
ered migrating from Norfolkshire either to Scotland or the Island
of Gurnsey in order to enjoy freedom of speech. John Robinson,
who later led the Pilgrims from Austerfield and Scrooby to Hol-
land, and who later yet helped on if he did not initiate their
removal to Plymouth, was a settled minister of St. Andrew's
Parish in Norwich between 1602 and 1607, where he may have
been known to Robert Peck. Cromwell's mother was a Norwich
woman, and Cromwell was much in this vicinity. Norfolk was
one of the seven shires later associated for his support, and from
Norfolk came many of his ironsides.

Through these years the officials in Norfolk had hard work
of it. Bishop Harsuet of Norwich, for example, is disliked by
the people because he favors the Court, and by the Court for the
contrary reason that he favors the people. In 1619 he is singu-
larly accused of holding " both papistical and puritanical leanings."
Evidently the poor bishop did what he could. In 1624 we find
him thanking the bailiflfs of Yarmouth, a short distance from
Hingham, for closing conventicles. In the same year complaints
are lodged against him in Parliament for suppressing sermons
and lectures, exacting undue fees, persecuting parishioners who

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 37

refused to bow to the east, setting up images in the churches,
and the like. He answers that these accusations proceed from
the independents ("Puritans") whom he has vainly tried to sup-
press. As the conflict grew more bitter these difficulties increased.

Much more might be related to show the temper of independ-
ency and its expression in Norfolkshire. But this outline will
serve as a background. With these facts in mind, let us look at
one of the fragments of Hingham history that has survived these
three centuries. We learn that in 1605 Eobert Peck became
minister of St. Andrew's Parish, Hingham, a conspicuous and
influential position. The son of a country gentleman, who traced
his ancestry back through twenty generations to an ancient York-
shire family, he was born in Beccles, Sufi'olk, a short distance
from Hingham, in the year 1580. Beccles had been made con-
spicuous by the burning of several heretics there a few years
earlier. At the age of sixteen Peck entered Magdalene College,
Cambridge University, then the academic center of the democratic
movement, receiving his Bachelor's degree in 1599, and his
Master's in 1603. It is to be noted that John Kobinson was
much in Cambridge until 1601, when he resigned his fellowship
to take up his work in Norwich. The two men may well have
been acquainted at the University. In his twenty-fifth year Peck
was inducted into his first and only parish, which he served
through many vicissitudes for fifty-three years until his death in
1658.

The contest which we have reviewed was at his doors. In
the year of his settlement, 1605, five ministers were expelled from
their parishes in the diocese of Norwich, all neighbors of Robert
Peck, and undoubtedly known to him. Soon after John Eobinson
left Norwich for Scrooby. In 1615 Peck was himself reported

38 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

to Parliament for nonconformity and misdemeanors, in other
words for his independency. We are told also that on one occa-
sion the citizens of Norwich petitioned Parliament in his behalf.*

Before continuing with the Hingham history it is necessary
to recall that in 1625 Charles the First succeeded his father. He
early chose as an advisor William Laud, who became Archbishop
of Canterbury. With him the struggle to make England con-
form was carried to its greatest lengths, and he early turned his
attention to this eastern promontory.

Sir Nathaniel Brent had been sent down to hold a metro-
politan visitation. We are told that " many ministers appeared
without priests' cloaks and some of them suspected for non-
conformity, but they carried themselves so warily that nothing
could be gathered against them." Robert Peck is believed to
have been among this number.

Such a condition of affairs was intolerable to Archbishop
Laud, who now transferred Bishop Wren from Hereford to
Norwich. This prelate's policy has survived in a single phrase,
"Uniformity in doctrine and Uniformit}'- in discipline." He
began at once to enforce these uniformities and in the little more
than two years of his administration " he caused no less than
fifty godly ministers to be excommunicated, suspended, or
deprived." )

These fifty men yould not read the Book of Sports in the
churches as they weye bidden. The book exhorted the people
to play games on Sunday in Continental fashion, and was

* The writer has not been able to verify the statement, but regards it as probable.

Robert Peck married Anne Lawrence, whose father was " a reverend grave minister, a
preacher to those who, fleeing for religion in Q. Marie's days, met together in woods and
secret places as they could. He was a gentleman of great estate, and exceeding in liberality
to the poor." /

ST. ANDREWS CHURCH, HINGHAM, NORFOLK, ENGLAND,
AS SEEN FROM THE RECTORY GROUNDS

THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PEWTER BAPTISMAL BASIN, OWNED BY THE FIRST
PARISH, BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN BROUGHT FROM ENGLAND BY THE FIRST SETTLERS.
IT HAS BEEN IN CONTINUOUS USE FOR NEARLY THREE CENTURIES.

PI3BU

^iJ

THE SETTLEMENT OF H INGHAM. 39

abhorrent alike to the Sabbath-keeping people and clergy. They
persisted in using " conceived " prayers in addition to the
liturgy ; that is, they offered prayers of their own composing,
an offence strictly forbidden. They further stood at the desks
instead of facing the communion table when they read. Their
other misdemeanors were of a similar nature. Among those
excommunicated was Robert Peck, now^ a man over fifty years
of age.

When Bishop Wren, largely for his doings in Norfolk, was
impeached before the Parliament two years later special mention
is made of Robert Peck. The Bishop says in his defence : " It
appears in the records of this House that Robert Peck had been
complained of for misdemeanors, and that in 1616 and 1622 he
was convicted for nonconformity." These statements show that
through these years Robert Peck had been fighting for the
rights of the people and had been brought to the attention of
Parliament three times.

The Ilingham story has many turnings. We must now
look back to the earlier years of Peck's ministry. It may be
noted in passing that in 1619 he baptized Samuel Lincoln, the
fourth great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. Fourteen years
earlier, in 1605, he baptized a little baby who was destined to
play a notable part in the lives of many Ilingham people. This
boy was Peter Hobart, a founder and the first minister of New
Hingham. Robert Peck baptized him doubly, first into the
fellowship of the faith and then into the Christian ministry.

Much might be said of the Hobart family with which Peter
was connected. The member who held the Speaker of the
House in his chair in the incident already cited was a Hobart.
Sir Henry Hobart was Attorney General to James the First,

40 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

and afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
The family was prominent in the region. Their altar tomb with
its paneled sides, built in 1507, may still be seen in the nave
of Norwich Cathedral. The fact that it survived the later sack-
ing of the Cathedral is probably a proof of the standing of the
family. Peters kinship with these distinguished men has not
been traced. Some kinship is probable, if not certain, and in
temper he was trul}' related to them.

Peter was sent first to a grammar school, then to a Free
School in Lynn, and thence to Magdalene College, Cambridge,
where he graduated in 1625, from the same college where
Eobert Peck had graduated twenty-two years earlier. Next he
became a "teacher," delivering lectures and preaching. But
because of his independence he had difficulty in securing a
parish. Cotton Mather tells us that " his stay in England was
attended with much unsettlement." Mather also adds this one
mention of his wife : " Yet by the blessing of God on his
diligence and by the frugality of his virtuous consort, he lived
comfortably." In 1635, together with the others from Old
Hingham and its vicinity, he migrated to New England, where
he joined his father and a few other settlers who had established
themselves about two years earlier on the shore of Bare Cove,
now Hingham harbor.

AVhile Hobart had been growing to manhood, the troubles
between King and Parliament had deepened. Taxes had been
levied without the Parliament's consent and collected by force.
Archbishop Laud as we have seen had taken in hand the govern-
ment of the churches. And events had been happening at
Norwich that were no doubt much discussed in Old Hinorham.
The Dutch and Flemish people, we remember, had long been

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 41

established in Norwich and its neighborhood. For many years
their independent churches had existed under a special grant of
Edward the Third. Despite the royal grant, however, the
Archbishop proceeded to close these churches. Rather than
submit the Dutch and Flemish people migrated back across the
sea to the low countries. Many hundred people, it is said, left
Norfolkshire. Perhaps as many as four thousand left the vicinity
of Norwich. The exodus resulted in great detriment to the city
and to the region, for these men were expert weavers.

In short, a great harrying process was in progress. King
James had said that he would harry the independents out of
England. By continuing the process Charles hoped to make
England an absolute monarchy, and by this same process the
Archbishop hoped to establish absolute ecclesiastical authority.
He was trying to build that dreaded " Imi^erium in imperio,^^ the
kingdom within the kingdom, which was so feared by our
fathers.

The Archbishop was seeking to make the Church the
supreme agency in the government. It is well for us to under-
stand what this meant to individual liberty. He revived the
ecclesiastical courts. He forbade the right of assembly. Men
could not meet for an evening's talk without fear of examination
and penalty. For such an offence "we learn that Robert Peck
and his people were disciplined in Hingham. Peck had been
repeating the catechism with a group of his parishioners, and with
them had sung a psalm. We learn also that " he had infected his
parish with strange opinions." A man might be fined, exiled,
perhaps banished or killed for like offences. It was for sound
reasons that our fathers dreaded the " imperium in imperio."

The reasons for all the migration to the low countries and

42 THE SETTLEMENT OF H INGHAM.

to New England are rooted in this determination of the Arch-
bishop and King to complete the work begun by King James,
to harry all the Puritans out of England. However academic
and shadowy this word "Puritan" may now have become, the
King and Archbishop used it with broad inclusiveness. They
meant literally to harry out of England all persons opposed to
ecclesiastical courts and like institutions of tyranny civil or
ecclesiastical, in short all who contended for a free and consti-
tutional government. Under the name of Puritan they doubt-
less would have included every reader of this article, no matter
what his shade of religious opinion or affiliation. It was while
these difficulties were at their heiofht that the first exodus took
place from Old to New Hingham.

The immediate causes are at present unknown to us. For
gathering in the rectory and singing a psalm together, as has
been said, Bishop Wren had the culprits before him in the
Church, and made them answer to each charge, " I do humbly
confess my sin." The incident may well have played a part in
their determination to migrate. Peck was a marked man, as
was shown by the reports to Parliament, and by his " infection
of the town with strange opinions." Hingham was under sus-
picion of liberality and independence. These considerations
cannot fail to have had weight.

Probably the whole atmosphere of the time and place led
naturally to the migration. Many people were leaving England.
Cromwell, it is said, just missed coming to America. The Hing-
ham people had seen the weavers driven out of Norwich and a
rich industry laid in ruin. They had seen similar removals all
around them. They well knew the meaning of the contest, and
their cause at this time was deep in shadow. Beside migration

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 43

there was no other relief for independent men from the tyranny
of Church and State. In 1635 the second company came out,
and among them Peter Hobart.

These settlers of 1635, as the others probably had done
before them, came from Charlestown by boat, and landing on
the shore of what is now the mill pond, Peter Hobart offered
prayer for the blessing of God upon the new settlement. This
may be fairly called the beginning of the Plantation. Events
quickly followed. Land was apportioned in the summer of
1635, and in October of the same year the name of Hingham
was recognized by the General Court. Peter Hobart " gathered"
the parish, and erected the first meeting-house, a log building
surrounded with a palisade.

After the exodus conditions in Norfolkshire grew steadily
worse. The Archbishop by this time had silenced the week-day
lectures, confiscating their endowments ; in many places he had
abolished preaching ; and he had revived ecclesiastical forms
long disused and obnoxious to the people. On entering and
leaving the churches the people were bidden to courtesy to the
east, a practice unknown since the Reformation. Since the
Reformation also the communion tables for the most part had
stood in the broad aisles. The Archbishop now ordered them
to be restored to the east end of the churches, and to be raised
three feet above the chancel floors. To us this order seems
harmless.

But to understand the bitter controversy which it provoked
we must remember that our forefathers saw in this far more than
a question of decorous public worship. When Governor Endi-
cott, for example, cut out the cross from the English flag the
act had many meanings. It surely was more than a question of

44 THE SETTLEMENT OF H INGHAM.

buntino- and decoration. So the location of the communion
tables contained meanings other than at first appear. The ques-
tion then involved large political issues. For sound reasons it
appeared to the fathers to be a matter of political liberty. The
whole issue in short was grave and serious. There were open
quarrels in the churches, protests from the Bishops, parlia-
mentary commissions, petitions to Parliament, and a great ado.

It is now to be remembered that Robert Peck was a marked
man, three times reported to Parliament, convicted of noncon-
formity. But to this order about the communion tables he
could not submit. He not only refused to obey. He went
further. He dug the floor of his chancel a foot below the floor
of the church, and there placed his communion table, endeavoring
to make it symbolic of humility. This was a daring and a last
defiance flung in the face of an opposing power capable of crush-
ing him. Having done this thing, for which if caught he would
certainly have been imprisoned, he fled over the sea, joining his
former parishioners and fellow townsmen in New Hingham,
where Peter Hobart, who had grown up under him, and whom he
had baptized doubly thirty-three years before, was now the
minister. So, as Cotton Mather tells us, "This light having
been by the persecuting prelates put under a bushel was, by the
good providence of Heaven, fetched away into New England,
where the good people of our Hingham did rejoice in the light
for a season."

Robert Peck did not come alone. Many of the best families
of Old Hingham came with him, about thirty in number. If one
may hazard a comparison between the companies, the earlier
comprised more men of Peter Hobart's generation, the last more
men of Robert Peck's generation, men well established in Old

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 45

Hingham, in some instances probably the fathers of those who
had come out in 1G35. Blomfield, no friend to the Puritans,
tells us in his history that these men came at great sacrifice,
selling their possessions for half their value. Not a few in their
coming showed that they still were possessed of affluence. For
example, Joseph Peck, brother of Robert, brings his wife and
two children, and with them three maids and two menservants,
five servants for four people. Even to-day this would be con-
sidered luxurious ; for that time it was far more exceptional.

The names of these families, about one hundred and thirty
in all, have become well known the whole land over. The names
are as follows :

Jacob, Lincoln, Ilobart, Gushing, Gibbs, Lane, Chubbuck, Austin,
Baker, Bates, Betscome, Bozworth, Buckland, Cade, Cooper, Cutler, Farrow,
Fop, Gould, Hersey, Hodsdin, Smith, Johnson, Large, Loring, Hewett,
Liford, Ludkin, Morse, Nolton, Otis, Phippeny, Palmer, Porter, Rust, Smart,
Strong, Tuttil, Walton, Andrews, Arnall, Bacon, Collier, Marsh, Martin, Peck,
Osbom, Wakely, Gill, Ibrook, Cockerum, Cockerill, Fearing, Tucker, Beal,
Eames, Hammond, Hull, Jones, Lobdin, Langer, Leavitt, Mott, Minard,
Parker, Russell, Spraguei, Strange, Underwood, Ward, W^oodward. Winches-
ter, Walker, Barnes, Cobbit, Clapp, Carlslye, Dimock, Dreuce, Hett, Joshlin,
Morrick, Nichols, Paynter, Pitts, Shave, Turner, Tower, Gilman, Foulsham,
Chamberlain, Bates, Knights,, James, Buck, Payne, Michell, Sutton, Moore,
Allen, Hawke, Ripley, Benson, Lawrence, Stephens, Stodder, Wilder, Thax-
ter, Hilliard, Price, Burr, Whiton, Lazell, Stowell, Garnett* and Canterbury.

Here then were some one hundred and thirty families trans-
planted from the level country of that eastern promontory, from
the broad and fertile Norfolk fields, the comfort of well estab-
lished homes, the simple and pleasing dignity of Old Hingham,
to the sandy soil, the shallow harbor, the hardship and desolation
of the remote wilderness, to the frontier edge of an untrodden
continent. This is something worth pondering on. Search the

46 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

records as we may the plainer becomes the fact that the predomi-
nating motive which brought them here was the love of liberty.
They were moved by that spirit of democracy which in ever
increasinir streno;th has been slowly chanoring the face of the
world, and whose greatest single expression is found to-day in
our Republic. They believed, as the fourth great-grandson of
Samuel Lincoln described democracy, in government "of the
people, by the people, and for the people." And the Hingham
Plantation in those early days contributed in no small measure to
the formation of that spirit of New England independency which
later so largely shaped our national institutions.

The story of the exodus, however, must not merge into the
history of the Hingham Plantation, which happily still continues.
Perhaps no better ending can be given this narrative than to
follow the life of Robert Peck to its close. New Hingham made
him the co-laborer with Peter Hobart, curiously enough reordain-
ing him to this office. Many New England parish pulpits
were thus " double-barreled." In this capacity he served New
Hingham for three years, living on the land now owned by the
First Parish just to the south of the Old Meeting House.

Meantime in England the mighty storm of protest and
rebellion was oratherino-. King Charles was forcing the Parlia-
ment to arms. The beginnino^s of the Commonwealth were
appearing. The King and Archbishop could not heed the inde-
pendency of a Norfolk minister, no matter how flagrant. So in
1641 the people of Old Hingham urged Robert Peck to return to
them. Peck's successor had reported that the people were " very
factious, resorting to other Churches." The last exodus of 1638
had indeed left the town in a pitiable condition. A curious peti-
tion, still preserved in manuscript in the Bodleian Library at

THE SETTLEMENT OF H INGHAM. 47

Oxford, sets forth the pathetic straits to which the community had
been reduced, and gives a picture of the times that is worth noting.

It is addressed to "the Right Honorable the Knights, Bur-
gesses and Cittizens of the House of Commons," and is entitled,
"The humble peticon of the Inhabitants of the poore ruinated
towne of Hingham." It "in most humble wise sheweth" how
Robert Peck had for thirty and two years been discharging the
office of faithful pastor, " being a learned, godly, loving, peaceful
and painful minister, a man so unblameable in his life and doc-
trine that no just offence in either could ever be found concern-
ino- him." It tells how he was excommunicated for not appearing
in person before the Chancellor of the Diocese, how when he
sought reinstatement he must sign " certain new Articles," how
on his refusal the Bishop took away his living, " and put in
Curates to the vexation of the parson and parishioners." " About
a year and a half after they deprived him under a pretence of
non-residency ; yet he did always abide where he had so long
lived, having had such a care of his charge in religion and civil
affairs, that the people were able to maintain their poor and to
help other towns, as neighboring Townes can well witnesse,"

The petition next touches on the reasons for the exodus.
" The minister being driven away, and forced in his old age to
flee to seek his peace, and diverse of the inhabitants put to great
loss and charges by the Chancellor and other ecclesiastical offi-
cers, some for going to a neighboring towne to hear a godly
minister preach, and most of them for building a mount in the
east end of the Chancel, and of observing ceremonies to which
they were inforced ; (it transpires that) Most of the able inhabi-
tants have forsaken their dwellings, and have gone several ways
for their peace and quiet, and the towne is now left and like to

48 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

be in misery by reason of the meanness of the (remaining)
inhabitants."

The petition relates recent difficulties and ends with one
most illuminatincr incident that occurred some time after the
exodus. A fair was held in the town on St. Matthias Day. A
neighboring minister, Mr. Vylett, was asked to preach.
" Amongst other godly exhortations he did wish the people to
make use of the means of grace for (he said) some lights are gone
out of this land." For this reference to Robert Peck and his
associates Vylett was immediately deprived of his right to
preach, and had to make two journeys up to London before he
could be reinstated.

The petition ends with " humbly craving redresse, that
Mr. Peck our old minister may be by law and justice of this
Court reduced to his old possession."

As the date when this petition was submitted to Parliament
is unknown, it probably was about 1640, we cannot tell what
direct connection it had with Peck's return. But he is believed
to have left New Hinoham in 1641. "The invitation of his
friends at Hingham in England," Cotton Mather tells us, "per-
suaded him to return unto them ; where, being thought a great
person for stature, yet a greater for spirit, he was greatly ser-
viceable for the o-ood of the Church." It could have been no
easy thing for him to have returned to " the poor ruinated towne,"
whence most of his friends had fled. But he went back to take
up again his interrupted ministry, and to bear his part in the
approaching conflict. There can be no doubt that thorough
research in England would bring to light more concerning both
Peck and his associates.

The times had dealt hard with the Bishop of Norwich, sue-

THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM. 49

cessor to the Bishop who had persecuted Eobert Peck. The
citizens had sacked his palace, had burned his papers and books
in front of the cathedral, and stripped alike of his private for-
tune and emoluments and broken in health the poor bishop took
refuge in Old Hingham, where both he and Robert Peck lived for
the remainder of their lives.

One last incident of Peck's ministry must be mentioned.
In 1654 he was appointed on a Parliamentary Commission to
" eject the scandalous, ignorant, and inefficient ministers and
schoolmasters of Norfolk and Norwich." Perhaps this was not
an uncongenial task !

He died in 1658, and, as he himself directed in his will, was
buried "beside my wife and near my church." His will, it is
pleasant to note, breathes a suggestion of plenty. He speaks of
" My messuage, with all its edifices, yeards, and orchards, also
enclosures and barns adjoining." He speaks also of " my lady-
close," possibly a part of some convent land. Evidently his
last years were spent in comfort, perhaps even in affluence. On
his death he had served his parish for fifty-three years, of which
three years had been given to this section that had removed
itself across the sea.

The happenings at New Hingham in themselves form a story
of no small significance. But we are concerned here only with
the causes which led to the erection of this Plantation. "When
these causes ceased to be operative, that is, when the monarchy
fell and the Commonwealth under Cromwell came into power,
immigration to New England wholly ceased. For the next two
centuries there was little growth in the New England Colonies
except that which came by their own natural development. No
more convincing proof could be shown that combined as it was

50 THE SETTLEMENT OF HINGHAM.

with many others the main motive of the immigration was the
love of freedom.

We are confronted to-day with rapidly shifting conditions.
A newer New England is supplanting the old. Customs and
traditions are being established among us which, if not hostile to
our democratic spirit, are alien to it. This is because some of
our newer and older citizens alike are often ignorant of our his-
tory and of the heroic service by which the men of the older
time purchased our freedom. Surely we can most profitably
remember the history of the New England settlements. And by
no means least among them is the story of the erection of this
free Plantation of New Hingham. Unless deep disappointment
awaits those who hope that the newer New England will become
more truly democratic and better than was the older New Eng-
land, our newer New England must attain to a larger measure of
individual liberty than did the old. This can best be brought to
pass, not by forgetting the work of the forefathers, but by look-
ing unto the rock whence we were hewn.

Louis C. Cornish.

THE HOME MEADOWS.

PARALLEL with the broad, elm-shaded main street of Hing-
ham lies a stretch of salt marsh, which is one of the most
picturesque features of this interesting old town. Ages ago
the harbor, the green surfaces of which at low tide show us that
the process of filling up is still going on, must have extended
inland more than half a mile further than it does at present ;
but now the tide-flow is restricted to a meandering stream
which winds among great fields of waving grass, after the
fashion of the small, sluggish rivers of the English counties of
Lincolnshire and Norfolk, from the borders of which our early
settlers came ; and it was, possibly, the suggestion of the dear
fen-country at home that made the pioneers choose the English
name for this town in memory of the place of their birth, to
which their hearts turned fondly in their lonely, struggling days.

When the flood-o:ates at the harbor are shut, and a broad
sheet of water stretches from bank to bank, one understands
that all this shallow, marshy land must have risen slowly from
the depths, — the product of the wash of the neighboring hills
retained by floating marine vegetation, until, little by little, it
became firm enough to afi'ord a lodging for the seeds of the
marsh grasses which now cover it so luxuriantly during the
dry summer months.

In whichever of their changing phases the Hingham
meadows choose to show themselves, they are always a delight
to the eye, and afford pictures which every artist rejoices in,
both for the wealth of color of the grass and bordering trees,

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52 THE HOME MEADOWS.

and the graceful lines of the wandering stream and its adjacent
slopes.

On the west the marsh is bounded by low wooded hills
dotted with oaks and maples. There are miniature bays and
capes, promontories and peninsulas along the edges; and, from
the time when the red oaks are tipped with warm color in the
spring till they deepen in the late autumn into rich crimson and
russet, there is a continual melting of one lovely tone into
another upon these waving tree masses, with their undulating
sky line, which is full of beauty.

On the eastern shore lie fruit orchards, which in May are
flushed with pink, or snowy with sheets of white blossoms, that
contrast admirably with the tender young green of the lines of
wavinsr willows along the countrv road. The meadow has its
exquisite youth, like a maiden, and in its early spring promise is
suggestive of girlhood and hope and tenderness. There is a
melting softness in its aspect when, under the blue skies flecked
with round white clouds, it awakens from its brown winter sleep,
and decks itself with delicate tints for its late May day. The
stream is blue and shining, and reflects the earliest dawn ; the
orchards are rosy ; the trees, a pale emerald-green ; the white
gulls come flying in from the sea, calling to each other ; and now
and then a solitary heron stands solemnly on one leg and looks
at his reflection in the water. The little houses at the harbor,
which have all winter stood up in hard outline among the bare
trees, now begin to hide amid shimmering foliage, which casts
soft shadows upon their white and yellow walls. From the tall
chimney of the power-house the smoke waves like a banner
celebrating the coming of spring.

Later, all these gay tints are merged in a rich luscious green

THE HOME MEADOWS. 53

of but slightly varied hue. Taller and taller grow the rank
grasses as the stream sinks lower. The woods are in full, dark
leaf; the apple blossoms have fallen ; the little houses are almost
hidden, and the frequent summer trains go shrieking across the
lower end of the meadow, filling the air with rolling clouds of
white and umber.

Then comes August, when the hues of the sedsres bea^in to
shade from green to yellow-brown in patches of rich, warm
color ; and the meadow takes on a fresh glory. Late in the
month come the mowers with their carts ; and the tall windrows
fall in heavy heaps, while the usually still plain is alive with
moving forms, swinging the scythes in rhythm. The loads are
piled high upon the ricks, the horses labor over the soft surface,
and the human interest of the scene adds a fresh charm to the
lonely level stretches. After the crop is removed, there are
rich hues of ochre and crimson upon the meadow, which
harmonize with the "fold and scarlet which beijins to burn in the
woodland. An autumn haze softens the landscape, and gives to
it something mysterious and entrancing. Between the two
loveliest aspects of the marshes — the promise of the spring and
the ripe splendor of the autumn — one can hardly choose, each
has so potent an attraction.

Even in winter there is great beauty in the broad white
plain, all snow and ice, like an arctic wilderness. Skaters come
and go in merry groups over the flooded icy surface ; fishermen
spearing for eels are seen working over holes in the ice ; the
pale sky and the madder-tinted woods make a new combination
of color in the kaleidoscope, so that there is always a pleasant
picture for the eyes of those whose good fortune it is to
command a view of this beautiful scene.

54 THE HOME MEADOWS.

The harbor lies north of the marshes ; and the stream
empties into it through flood-gates, where it is utilized to turn a
mill. From this direction, looking southward up the meadow,
one sees its fine surface unbroken, till it is checked by the
sudden rise of the land at the south to the plain where the
central village stands. From the high ground at that end
the view is most beautiful ; for the whole sinuous course of the
stream lies mapped before the eye, the group of houses at the
harbor becomes but a detail, and over and beyond them one sees
the masts of shipping on the blue line of the sea, and at nightfall
catches the flashing glimpses of Boston light glowing like a great
star on the distant horizon, while the lights of passing steam-
boats flash like fire-flies in the darkness.

Long before the sun rises in the summer, one can see the
pools in the meadow shining like an open eye, reflecting the
coming dawn ; and the pale light lingers in its quiet reaches
long after the rest of the landscape is plunged in shadow.
Always its calm beauty has its message of quietness and peace
to the thoughtful mind. The hurrying trains may break in for
a moment upon its tranquil solitude with a suggestion of the
anxious, hurried life outside from which it lies so remote, but
these are but an incident in its continuous and abiding rest-
fulness.

Far from

" The weariness, the fever, and the fret "

of our troubled times this lovely scene lies in ever-changing

beauty, unvexed by the restless men who come and go beside it.

There is a meaning in it, something placid and comforting

which imparts the blessing of quiet Nature to the anxious mind.

THE HOME MEADOWS. 65

" Over the level
And streaming^and shining on
Silent river,
Silvery willow,

Slideth the gleam."

Even so the light which emanates from the silent Hingham
meadows, when all is dark around, seems to suggest the reflection
of the light of heaven in the patient soul.

Mary C. Eobbins.

A town has reason to be proud when she can claim as her
children and grandchildren such men as John Hancock, Andrews
Norton, Charles Eliot Norton, William Ware, Richard Henry
Stoddard, Levi Lincoln, Albert Fearing, Isaac Hinckley, and the
three members of the Gay family, — Sidney Howard, Allan, and
Walter Gay. Among the names of those who trace their ances-
try to Hingham are Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner.
Thi*ee of her citizens have held executive office in the Common-
wealth — General Benjamin Lincoln, lieutenant-governor in
1789 ; John A. Andrew, born in Maine, governor in 1861-2-
3_4_5, and John D. Long, also born in Maine, governor in
1880-1-2.

DERBY ACADEMY.

IN the latter part of the last century the establishment of schools
and academies was much the fashion of the time. Their
endowment was a popular means of devoting private funds to
the general welfare for the promotion of higher education in
New England. Some survive and flourish, some have waned,
and some have disappeared altogether, unable to attract pupils
in competition with the more ample public funds appropriated
to the support of free high schools. It was during the period
when schools were being founded quite frequently in New Eng-
land that Mrs. Sarah Derby decided to devote a considerable
portion of the property acquired from her first husband, Dr.
Ezekiel Hersey, a distinguished physician in his native town of
Hingham, to the establishment of a school. She also was a
native of Hingham, and was born April 18, 1714. Her portrait
hangs on the wall of the school.

In 1784 Madam Derby conveyed to ten trustees the land
upon which the academy building stands, to be used for such a
purpose after her death ; but for the more effectual execution of
their trust, and in accordance with the terms of that trust, the
said trustees obtained from the General Court an Act of Incor-
poration of the "Derby School " Nov. 11, 1784.

Madam Derby died June 17, 1790. She made liberal pro-
visions in her will for the benefit of the school ; and it was
opened April 5, 1791.

The Massachusetts policy of granting lands in Maine to
academies made it for the pecuniary advantage of the " school "

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DERBY ACADEMY. 67

to be an incorporated "academy; " and on June 17, 1797, the
*' Derby School " was erected into an academy by the name of
" Derby Academy " by an act of the General Court.

From the date of the opening of the school in 1791 until
the present time it has continued to furnish instruction to such
pupils as have " resorted to it " in varying numbers. At first
the male and female pupils were taught separately in separate
rooms, — the boys by a preceptor and the girls by a preceptress ;
but since 1849, partially, and since 1852, wholly, the boys and
girls have been taught together.

The building which was upon the land at the time of Madam
Derby's death was used for school purposes until 1818, when
the present building was erected.

In accordance with the provisions of Madam Derby's will
a sermon, known as the " Derby Lecture," is preached annually
to the scholars of the academy. For many years Lecture Day
was a notable occasion. The girls in white dresses and the boys
in white trousers formed a procession, headed by a band of
music, and marched from the academy to the New North Church.
The way was lined with spectators and the church filled.

The funds of the academy amount to about $30,000.

Several attempts were made by the town and the trustees,
before the establishment of a public high school in Hingham, to
formulate some plan by which the academy might serve the pur-
poses of a high school, as required by the laws of the Common-
wealth ; but no satisfactory conclusions were arrived at. The
long delay of the town in establishing a high school, which was
opened in 1872, caused this academy to be the school where, up
to that time, almost every boy who was fitted for college in
Hingham received much of his classical education, and where

58 DERBY ACADEMY.

nearly all who received any other education than the common
schools could give them obtained it. Many a generation will
owe its intellectual advancement to the seed sown in the minds
of its ancestors within the walls of Derby Academy.

Last year the old academy was renovated with new floors
and desks and paint, its fireplaces opened, and its walls colored.
It is now a most attractive type of the quaint antique buildings
in town.

Francis H. Lincoln.

In the public library at Hingham Centre are some interesting
and valuable collections, including a general collection of the
minerals of the world, a paleontological collection, and a geologi-
cal collection comprising specimens of all the rocks of Hingham.
These were the gift of the late Thomas T. Bouve, whose memory
Hingham is proud to cherish.

<
Q

THE ISEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LES'OX ANB
TILOcN FOUNDATIONS.

SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM.

HAYING boarded in Hingham during the two or three pre-
vious summers I built my house there in 1869 and have
lived there ever since. During that time I have seen it chan<re
from an almost purely New England village into a cosmopolitan
community. There was then no Catholic or Episcopal church.
The foreign born were few — mostly thrifty hard-working Irish-
men who had been driven from their native isle during the pre-
vious twenty years by the famine and the oppression which had
cursed it — men of strong natural parts who took to the soil, but
not in that generation to politics.

In the town-meetings the citizens who led and did the talking
were all of the original New England stock. To-day the children
and grandchildren of the immigrants from Erin, with the natural
fluency of speech of their race, are at the front, trained in our
schools, furnishing a majority of our school children, active in
all the professions and indoor businesses, prominent in political
organization and representation, and spokesmen at the town meet-
ing. The Catholic is the only crowded church attendance in town.
Of late in one quarter of the village there is a numerous colony
of Italians, doing the rough work which the Irishmen did fifty
years ago, and they also are in evidence in the lighter indoor
trades and shop keeping. There are families of German, Scandi-
navian, and other nationalities.

The man who can trace his ancestry back to the early settlers
has no longer the prestige on which he used to pride himself. In
the old days anybody who came from outside the town border was

(59)

60 SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM.

at a disadvantage. "When I built my house, desiring to patronize
home institutions, I went to the local insurance company for
insurance. The dignified old gentleman, a little deaf, who was
its secretary and who made me use a slate and pencil, though I
felt sure he could have heard what I said, immediately turned me
down, alleging that my house was too remote. In fact it is
within five minutes walk of the hotel, churches, railroad station
and the shops. I could see at once that he regarded me as a
young snipper-snapper and interloper with a red necktie and not
worthy of admission into the sacred circle. A story is told of a
citizen who in those days said of another " he a Hingham man !
Why, I can remember when his grandfather moved into this
town."

In 1869 there was of course the railroad as far only as
Cohasset on one side and Boston on the other. But the time-
honored passage to the city was by the steamboat line. It had
been in operation for nearly half a century, and prior to that time
the packet. The stage coach was of even remoter date. To-day
stage coach, packet, and steamboat are all things of the past.
Even the steamboat wharf, once a lively scene, is turned into a
private park, rarely a foot treading on its green turf. In my
early residence here, there were two steamboat lines, each with
several boats. At one time there was a very lively competition
between them. Fares were reduced ; they raced ; doubts about
each others boilers were expressed, and partisanship was keen.
Everybody went " on the boat." And a very delightful trip to
and from Boston it was — an hour or more of smooth water, now
and then enveloped in a precarious fog, a cool refreshing breeze,
picturesque headlands, islands, lighthouses and forts in the harbor,
steamers and sailing-vessels passed or met with sonorous whistles.

SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM. 61

and always a cheery company of permanent or summer residents,
men on business bound, women shopping, school children, all
gathered in their varied costumes on the decks and telling stories,
discussing politics, singing, smoking or what not. It was a daily
social neighborly commingling and one of the characteristic features
of Hingham life. We had some quaint characters among us then
whose shrewd and humorous sayings became household words.
All this has gone.

Indeed Hingham harbor to-day suggests nothing of its
ancient glory and activity. Before the days of railroads it had its
packets and sloops and was a commercial depot of supplies which
were thence distributed from it into the interior Plymouth County
towns. The " Cove," as it was and is still called, was alive with
ship stores, sail lofts, fish houses, shops now converted into
tenements, and it was the source of many a comfortable fortune.
The fishing industry was greater at one time than that of
Gloucester, some seventy vessels, captained and manned by
Hingham men, engaged in it. I saw the last of the schooners
lie rotting on the flats in front of my house forty years ago. In
place of this industry have come the pleasure boats and small
yachts, which dot the bay, if the tide is in, with their white sails
on summer afternoons. A pretty yacht club house has taken the
place of a fish house.

On the top of Old Colony Hill was the " Old Colony House,"
a spacious hotel commanding a magnificent view and filled with
summer guests who enlivened its broad piazzas with their group-
ings and the highways with their carriages. It was burnt in the
seventies and has never been rebuilt. There was no access,
except by the road through Rocky Nook, to Nantasket Beach.
Its present huddle of cottages and resorts and bath-houses and

62 SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM.

shows was not then even a dream. There were only the cliffs
and the beach and the great ocean expanse, with but a residence
or two, and one great summer hotel. Then it was rest ; now it is
hubbub.

At Crow Point thirty years ago no building except a sheepcot
was on that charming stretch of shore, sightly hills rising from
the beach and affording lovely residential sites. A few years
later Mr. Samuel Downer, of Dorchester, a man of ample means
and generous public spirit, saw its capabilities, bought it and at
once transformed it into an attractive summer resort. His pur-
pose was not one of profit but of providing within easy access
from Boston a place where its citizens, having a pleasant steam-
boat trip down the harbor, could have playgrounds, picnics,
amusements and rest. He instituted extensive clambake houses,
large airy dance halls, swings, parkways, woodsy retreats, a fine
restaurant, a summer hotel on the beach. Sometimes on a
Sunday he preached a sermon. He called his recreation ground
Melville Gardens and the whole place Downer Landing, a name,
however, which has now given way to the original and much
better old name of Crow Point. Steamboats made frequent trips,
and for years it was a scene of merry and brilliant concourse,
the music of the band floating out over the sea and shore. Every
step was taken for good order and the absence of anything like
riot or intoxication.

Since Mr. Downer's death, all this public provision has
been abandoned. All the halls and recreation buildings have
been taken down, and the whole Point is now devoted to private
residences, with their lovely view of sea and shore, their golf
grounds and pretty gardens. It is a delightful residential spot.

Referring to changes in names, the most striking instance of

SOME CHANGES IN H INGHAM. 63

such a change is the change in the name of the town itself. Its
orio-inal name in 1633 was either Bear Cove derived from the
presence at that time of some native bruin or more probably
Bare Cove from the bareness of the harbor flats at low tide. The
change was made Sept. 2, 1635, by the General Court in the
following words : " The name of Bare Cove is changed and here-
after to be called Hingham," — probably the shortest act of muni-
cipal incorporation in the annals of Massachusetts, if not of the
world.

The o;reat event each fall used to be the ao^ricultural fair.
All the summer residents and the whole town were in attendance
and crowds from the surrounding country. It lasted two days.
A hundred yoke of oxen in line were an imposing array.
To-day there is probably not even a steer within our borders.
The fair grounds were picturesque with booths and shows and
ploughing matches and games and streamers and costumes. The
school children had a holiday and were out in force. On the
second day a procession was formed, led by the Hingham brass
band, now extinct, not even a ghost of its clarion or rubadub
hovering over the spot. A chief marshal, a new one every year
so that the honor might go round, mounted and glorious, gave
orders that nobody heeded. At the front were the venerable
Albert Fearing, founder and president of the society, Solomon
Lincoln, Esq., its secretary and Hingham's historian, the select-
men and magnates of the municipality, and the invited guests, chief
among whom was of course the governor of the Commonwealth,
with sometimes members of his bedizened stafl", and the orators
of the occasion, and then the dinner ticket holding citizens with
their wives. Round the great hall, now converted into the town
house, the procession moved. Then between rows of onlookers

64 SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM.

it marched into the spacious dining-room. There a bounteous
rural dinner was spread. Upon a raised dais sat the elect,
while on the floor every seat at the tables was taken and the room
filled with the general public. Dr. Loring, " a fine figure of a
man," eloquent and pleasing, was a frequent speaker, as was
always Judge Thomas Russell, who sang the praises of the
Pilgrim fathers and of his native county of Plymouth. The
governor gave the usual platitudinous compliments. Other visit-
ing speakers cracked the old chestnuts, which were received with
as hearty applause as if they were brand new, and rang the
chano;es on General Lincoln and Governor Andrew as if we had
never before heard their praises, till their names became almost
as tiresome to us as that of Aristides the Just to the wearied
Athenian.

All that scene is over and sfone. Indeed few of the distinc-
live peculiarities that then marked the town remain. Having
then few factory industries, and those now abandoned, its
interests are now largely linked with the metropolis of Boston,
a laro-e number of our citizens doing business there, going to it
in the morning and returning at night. Fifty years ago there
were distinct traces of the bitter ancient feud, really political and
social and not in any way religious or theological, which led to
the break in the old meeting-house society and the institution of
the New North Society in 1806. But to-day it is obliterated,
and the two streams flow in complete harmony, only delighted
with each others placid current.

Half a century ago you were conscious of a sort of local
clannish separation between sections of the town. Broad Bridge
at the railroad station, then further south in succession. Little
Plain, Great Plain, Liberty Plain. But now even these names

SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM. 65

are familiar only to the older inhabitants. The electric railway-
has tied all parts together. Especially of late years, with the
easy connection now of all with quick access to Boston, the
vacant building spots have been built upon and the old farm
homes bought and renovated by incomers from the city who have
thus found more delightful and less expensive residence than
there. The town has thus become a sort of honeymoon paradise
for newly-married couples who set up their tents among us. In
our church attendance, our social meetings, our clubs, our politi-
cal and local rallies I find a mingling of faces that are recent
and unfamiliar. One result of all this is an increasing coa-
lescence of all members of our community, a democratic spirit in
which all come together, a degree of common feeling and
interest and an absence of partisan and social distinctions (yet
with entire freedom and often earnest individual expression of
differences of opinion), which happily more and more charac-
terize Hingham. Neighborhood good nature and helpfulness
prevail.

Our recent and public-spirited Village Improvement Society
is doing admirable work in bettering and beautifying the aspect
of the town and preserving its ancient charm. And a chime of
bells, fitly connected with the old meeting-house burying-ground,
will soon from a monumental tower ring back and in the old,
without rino-ino; out the new.

In short, it is all a part of the expansion that is going on all
over our Commonwealth. It is the transition from limited and
localized life to cosmopolitan enlargement. The facile faucet
has supplanted the pump and the half-the-time dry well, and now
floods us with pure water from the border of the metropolitan

66 SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM.

district. Instead of the malodorous kerosene lamp the electric
light illumines our houses and streets with a current from the
neighboring town. The ubiquitous automobile is monarch of
the highway. Indeed, we are substantially a part of the met-
ropolitan district. Already the tentacles of Boston are feeling
their way to grip us and make us one of its suburbs.

But Hingham individuality is by no means gone. Where
else could the illustrious Independent Corps of Cadets, surpassed
only by our own admirable Co. K, exhibit their white uniforms or
pitch their white tents better than on the field on the border of our
bay over which their music sounds ; or where could the crowds
they attract find so charming a background for their gala attire
and fine equipage? Where else are there two such houses of
religious worship as the " Old Meeting House," built in 1681,
the oldest in the country, quaint and simple, our Puritan pride,
and the "New North," of which Bulfinch was the architect, with
its original pews of clear broad pine, its wealth of light and
spacings, and its architectural perfection inside and outside, and
in which Jotham Burrell was sexton and rang the bell for sixty
years — the longest term of that kind of service in town? Where
else can you turn from the shore of the inflowing sea, around
which are charming residences ancient and modern, and, driving
up the broad main street overshadowed with the foliage of noble
elms, find yourself almost at once in the delight of old rural
New England, the way further on broadening to a width of two
hundred feet, bordered by quiet comfortable homes and low-
roofed farm-houses, a church steeple overtopping the scene, and
then, stretching back of these, soft fields and woods and hillsides
and the meadow through which runs a lazy brook, so that apace

SOME CHANGES IN HINGHAM. 67

you feel yourself far away from the bustling world and that
around you is the almost still untouched paradise of the old
Puritan country life?
Not all is changed.

John D. Long.

It was customary in many New England towns, until com-
paratively modern times, to pay the minister in produce rather
than in cash. The schedules thus made out are often interesting
reading. One such, dating back to the last century, is here
reproduced.

Articles which Mr. Wares Salary was Voted to be estimated on, viz. :

600 lb. Ox Beef at 20/ £6 0 0

400 lb. Pork at /4 6 13 8

400 lb. Fresh or small meat at /2i 434

20 Cords Oak Wood at 12/ 12 0 0

10 Barrels Cyder at 6/ 3 0 0

100 lb. Candles at /8 3 6 8

150 lb. Butter (Home made) at /8 5 0 0

2001b. Sugar at 48/ 4 16 0

15 Galls. Molasses at 1/9 16 3

2 Bis. Flour at 30/ 3 0 0

4 Tons English Hay for Cow and Horse at 48/ 9 12 0

Keeping a Cow & Horse in the Summer 4 4 0

150 lb. Cheese at /4i 2 16 3

45 Bushls. Home grown Corn at 4/ 9 0 0

20 do., Rye do., do. at 4/ 400

House Rent near the Meeting House 12 0 0

Maids Wages by the year 568

for Cloathing, Superfine Broadcloth to be estimated on at 30/

per yard 38 15 2

£185 0 0

HINGHAM FARMS.

{Reprinted in part from the Atlantic Monthly hy permission of Houghton

Mifflin <5- Co.)

WHERE, then, should a man live? I will make answer
only for myself, and say, Here in Hingham, right where
I am, for here the sky is round and large, the evening and the
Sunday silences are deep, the dooryards are wide, the houses are
single, and the neighborhood ambitions are good kitchen gardens,
good gossip, fancy chickens, and clean paint.

The ideal home depends very much, of course, on the home
you had as a child, but I can think of nothing so ideally home-
like as a farm, — an ideal farm, ample, bountiful, peaceful, with
the smell of apples coming up from the cellar, and the fragrance
of herbs and broom-corn haunting store-room and attic.

The day is past when every man's home can be his farm,
dream as every man may of sometime having such a home ; but
the day has just arrived when every man's home can be his
garden and chicken-pen and dooryard, with room and quiet and
trees.

The day has come, for the means are at hand, when life,
despite its present centralization, can be more spread out,
roomier, simpler, healthier, more nearly normal, because lived
nearer to the soil. It is time that every American home was
built in the open country, for there is plenty of land — land in
my immediate neighborhood for a hundred homes where children
can romp, and your neighbor's hens, too, and the inter-neighbor-
hood peace brood undisturbed. And such a neighborhood need

(63)

BINGHAM FARMS. 69

not be either the howling wilderness, where the fox still yaps, or
the semi-submerged suburban village, where every house has its
Window-in-Thrums.

Though to my city friends I seem somewhat remote and
incontiguous, still I am not dissevered and dispersed from my
kind, for I am only twenty miles from Boston Common, and as
I write I hear the lowing of a neighbor's cows, the voices of his
children as they play along the brook below, and oflf among the
fifteen square miles of tree-tops that fill my front yard, I see
two village spires. I often look at those spires, and as often
think of the many sweet trees that wave between me and the
tapering steeples, where they look up to worship toward the
sky, and look down to scowl across the street.

Any lover of the city could live as far out as this ; could
live here and work there. I have no quarrel with the city as a
place to work in. Cities are as necessary as wheat-fields and as
lovely, too — from twenty miles away, or from Westminster
Bridge at daybreak. The city is as a head to the body, the
nervous centre where the multitudinous sensations are organized
and directed, where the multitudinous and inter-related interests
of the round world are directed. The city is necessary ; city
work is necessary ; but less and less is city living necessary.

Let a man work where he will, or must ; let him live where
only the whole man can live — in a house of his own, in a yard
of his own, with something green and growing to cultivate,
something alive and responsive to take care of; and let it be out
under the sky of his birthright, in a quiet where he can hear the
wind among the leaves, and the wild geeso as they honk high
overhead in the niij-ht to remind him that the seasons have
changed, that winter is following down their flying wedge.

70 HINGHAM FARMS.

As animals (and we are entirely animal) we are as far under
the dominion of nature as any ragweed or woodchuck. But we
are entirely human, too, and have a human need of nature, that
is, a spiritual need, which is no less real than the physical. We
die by the million yearly for lack of sunshine and pure air ; and
who knows how much of our moral ill-health might be traced to
our lack of contact with the healing, rectifying soul of woods
and skies?

A man needs to see the stars every night that the sky is
clear. Turning down his own small lamp, he should step out
into the night to see the pole star where he burns or " the Pleiads
rising through the mellow shade."

One cannot live among the Pleiads ; one cannot even see
them half of the time ; and one must spend part of one's time in
the mill. Yet never to look for the Pleiads, or to know which
way to look, is to spend, not part, but all of one's time in the
mill.

So now, when a reasonable day's work is done, I turn home-
ward to the farm ; and these early autumn nights I hang the
lantern high in the stable, while four shining faces gather round
on upturned buckets behind the cow. The lantern flickers, the
milk foams, the stories flow — "Bucksy" stories of the noble
red man ; stories of Arthur and the Table Round, of Guyon and
Britomart, and the heroes of old ; and marvelous stories of that
greatest hero of them all — their father, far away yonder when
he was a boy, when there were so many interesting things to do,
and such fun doing them !

Dallas Lore Sharp.

SOME HINGHAM GARDENS.

H INGHAM people all love
their gardens, and devote
much attention to them, and
however small the enclosure in
front of the houses, it is almost
sure to he enlivened by gay beds
of bloom, and to show evidence
of loving care. The traditional
old-fashioned flowers have the
preference, and some of the
shrubs and perennials we like to
think of as descending from old
Colonial ancestors.

Near the station the well
kept garden of Mrs. Soule has
always charmed the eye, and
those on the main street of Mrs.
Thaxter, Mr. Morris F. Whiton, Mrs. Spooner, and Mrs.
Martin Hayes, with that of the late Frederick Guild, Esq.,
attract attention to their summer blaze of brilliant flowers,
always carefully tended. At South Hingham the gardens of
Mr. Henry "W. Gushing and Mr. Pridee are most attractive.
The rambling old garden of Mrs. Robbins' at Overlea used to
have a charm of its own, inherited from generations of Cushings,
but now that the owner is absent, and it is cared for only by
tenants, it is no longer the same, though its box arbor of over

(71)

72 SOME HINGHAM GARDENS.

a hundred years' growth, its masses of purple and Persian lilacs and
syringas, its tall white lilac trees, its blossoming shrubberies, and
its grand old elms shading the highway, give it an air of
ancient occupation, without any pretension to careful arrange-
ment.

At Hingham Centre, on the brow of the hill, with a fine dis-
tant view from it of the salt meadows is the beautiful garden
of Mrs. Hatch ; and the cheery beds of Mr. Ebed L. Eipley and
Mr. Pratt, and other lovers of flowers, also adorn that part of the
town.

The really large gardens are not visible from the street, but
have variet}^ and charm.

Mrs. John D. Long in a sunken hollow at Windholm has a
garden overlooked by upper slopes, which is the work of only
a few years, but is already so developed that an arid pasture has
been charmingly transformed into a picturesque scene. Its dis-
tinction is in its wide spaces, its shrubs and flowers not com-
pacted into close borders but artistically adapted to the site and
making a varied and unconfined parterre of clambering vines and
intermingled colors. A path leads to a sundial ; and there are
many rustic arrangements of benches and trellises made by the
energetic ex-Governor's own hands. The eflfect is open and
inartificial.

Mrs. Cornish has planted her garden at "Ye old ordinary,"
with many old-time flowers to preserve the Colonial traditions
of the venerable homestead.

At the Bouve place, at Indian Hollow, is a veritable arbore-
tum planted by the late owner, where specimens of every tree
that will grow in New England are still to be seen. Formerly
it had a pleasant flower-garden which is not now kept up.

GARDEN OF MISS MARY P. BARNES.

PART OF THE BREWER GARDEN — WORLD'S END.

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX ANB
TILOEN FOUNBATIONa

SOME HINGHAM GARDENS. 73

There is a spacious garden belonging to Mr. Charles B.
Barnes near his house overlooking the harbor, where straight
walks edged with box brought from the old Page garden in
Salem lead between borders full of sweet familiar flowers of an
earlier day. A path, along the crest of the hill, overlooks a
broad meadow ; venerable apple trees of great age shade some
portions of the grounds, and one strolls under their interlacing
bouo-hs through which the sunlight flickers. This garden is a
survival of a past age, for the older of the two houses on the place
is more than two hundred and twenty years old, and the ancient
oaks in the grounds, once a part of the forest primeval, speak
of a forgotten day.

The long straight walk through the center of the garden
has a herbaceous border with stately hollyhocks and tall lark-
spurs at the back and smaller flowers in front, so that all summer
there is a succession of flowers from the. early snowdrops and lilies-
of-the-valley, to the blaze of asters in the late autumn ; and no new-
fangled blossoms are permitted to mar the quaint simplicity of
the beds. Under a branch of one of the beautiful old apple trees,
full of rosy buds in early June, are a bench and a table where
afternoon tea is served ; and from the sunny walks, arched here
and there with climbing roses, is a wide view of Hingham
harbor and its bordering shores.

The kitchen-garden, below the hill, is also gay with beds of
annuals, after the English fashion of comforting the vegetables
with dashes of bloom.

A remarkable feature of the Barnes garden is a huge wis-
taria which wholly covers one side of the stable and drapes an
old arl)or. This vine is of great age, with a stem which well
might be called a trunk.

SOME HINGHAM GARDENS.

GROUP OF BOX TREES ON MATTHEW GUSHING HOMESTEAD — 250 YEARS OLD.

Adjoining these grounds is the garden of Mrs. Charles
Blake, which yields innumerable flowers, and at Mrs. Charles
Mason's on Martin's Lane is to be seen a skilfully arranged
grouping of shrubs and trees planned by a landscape gardener,
with a small flower garden between the house and the river.

The largest garden in Hingham is that of Miss Brewer and
Mrs. Blackmar at Martin's Lane, and there are few of the towns-
people who have not shared in its generous profusion freely
dispensed by the kindly owners.

SOME H INGHAM GARDENS. 75

This secluded garden lies at the side of and behind the
house, and has for a background the blue waters of the harbor
and the distant islands of Massachusetts Bay. There are huge
thickets of many colored rhododendrons, a terrace purple with
all varieties of German and French irises, flowering shrubs in
great numbers which are a joy, paths bordered with glowing
peonies, and others closely set with roses and other flowers.
The fifty years' growth of this garden is manifest in the great
size of the shrubs, which flourish in the rich soil and sea air.

There is one sheltered nook, encircled with trees which
keep ofi" the fierce salt winds, where are beds of heliotrope and
pansies, of asters and marigolds, and many other annuals, a
carpet of brilliant color, from which unending nosegays can be
made ; where the earliest blossoms venture forth, and the latest
linger in the warm shelter of the surrounding trees ; a quaint
sunny spot, my lady's garden, the very place for a quiet stroll,
with nothing to distract attention from the flowers. Should one
wish to go down to the harbor, a path overhung with apple
trees leads through the orchard to the grassy border of the bay.

South of the house is a charming glade, where some weep-
ing beeches cast their shadows on the green turf. On one side
is a rocky knoll, crowned with trees, at its foot a grape-vine
clambering over rocks and trellis ; and on the other, a spacious
border with tall rhododendrons in the rear, and in front of them
flaming azaleas, a splendid sight in June, while in the foreground
are stately many-hued Japanese irises in great variety.

Along the southern end of the house is a narrow border
ablaze in the autumn with hardy chrysanthemums, which linger
in that warm shelter until late in November, prolonging the
summer with their rich hues of crimson and gold.

76 SOME HINGHAM GARDENS.

Then there are the charming gardens and shrubberies of
Mrs. Edwin A. Hills and Mrs. Frederick A. Turner. All this
stretch of pretty homes is a paradise.

On the State road to Quincy is the large Bradley estate,
lying on both sides of the highway.

The planting of the hill has been done within twenty-five
years by skilled landscape gardeners ; the groups of trees are
admirably disposed, and have made, under careful cultivation a
surprising growth.

The western part of the place belongs to Miss Bradley, and
the grounds and entrance are very effective, with their brilliant
borders and shrubs, and great masses of evergreens, A winding
path, sheltered ffom view, leads down from the hill, through the
pines of the park, behind the house to the kitchen gardens and
greenhouses on the other side of Thaxter Street. Interspersed
with laurel and rhododendrons, a pond girdled with trees mirrors
the blue sky, and all about it are planted irises and other water
plants, while graceful willows dip their branches in the water,
and the pleasant walk winds along the border among the native
flowers and bracken. At one end is a wild and charming
ramble at the base of a sloping hill, overrun with blueberry
bushes, which make a variegated tapestry when touched with
autumn's vivid brush. Under the trees the laurels in June are
rosy with their exquisite unfolding cups ; and the masses of rho-
dodendrons shade from red to purple.

On the hill near the house is a dainty enclosed plaisance, the
special care of the owner, who allows no alien hand to touch it.
It is protected at each end by a concrete wall, with a stepped
cornice, hung with fragrant honeysuckle, wistarias and pink

MISS BRADLEY S GARDEN.

W'kJy: ,

APPLE TREES ON LOT OF SAMUEL, ANCESTOR OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

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SQME HINGHAM GARDENS. 77

rambler roses, from the west side of which a fountain trickles
into a shell-like basin.

Old apple trees, in the center of the enclosure form a canopy
for the tea-table, and a broad herbaceous border runs on three
sides of this garden, backed on the south by a large grape-vine,
and on the north by tall spruce trees.

The beds in the center are filled with annuals in harmonious
coloring, and this sheltered nook forms a pleasant out-of-door
parlor for a summer day, flushing in the early season with apple-
blooms into a rosy bower, always easily accessible and much
enjoyed.

Adjoining it is Mrs. Peter Bradley's rose garden, with its
wealth of rare specimens, and near by are her greenhouses with
their beautiful supply of flowers for the cold season.

Many other gardens there are in the town, cosy and shel-
tered, some hidden from view, and others in plain sight, where
the old favorites smile and shed their sweet perfume. Some of
these, like the dooryard of the General Lincoln homestead, must
perhaps have had many of the same old-fashioned flowers growing
in them for two hundred and seventy-five years. One likes to
think of this garland of perpetually renewed blossoms binding the
old Colonial days of 1635 to these of the twentieth century in a
chain of bloom.

Dear Hingham gardens, tended for all these years by the
hands of gentle women, long may they gladden the eyes of the
wayfarer along these elm-arched highways !

Mary C. Robbins.

THE NEGRO GALLERIES.

IN many of our Xew England towns,
during the early days, slavery existed on
a very small scale, and in its least objectionable
form, and in Hingham there were a few families with whom
before the Revolutionary War slave-holding was the inherited
custom. The accompanying sketch shows the provision made
in one of our churches for the attendance of colored people at
Sunday service.

The New North Church was built in 1806. At this time
there was still a number of families having colored servants,
thouo;h no lono-er slaves. That these might " s^o to meeting " on
Sunday, and still, as the inferior class, be remote from the other
church people, two additional galleries were built to provide

sittings for them.

These two galleries were fitted into the rear
(78)

THE NEGRO GALLERIES. 79

upper corners of the church, just above and on either side of the
choir-loft. In that on the right sat the men, in that on the left
the women. And for some thirty years a gradually diminishing
number of this class occupied their private boxes. Certainly,
they held the " high seats in the synagogue."

By 1830 the men's gallery had become practically unoccu-
pied, while in the women's there was only one regular attendant.
This girl, thus isolated, became an object of amusement to the
boys of the church, — so much so that one good lady in the con-
gregation rather than have her thus exposed gave her a sitting by
her own side in a pew on the floor. And in that pew she sat year
after year, a respected and cared-for member of the congregation,
long after her benefactress had gone to the grave and till, gray
and old and feeble, she joined her there.

The spirit of protest was thus growing strong among many
of the parish against this custom of their fathers ; and it is worthy
of notice in this connection that the people of the New North
Church, together with those of the South Parish Church, were
among the few congregations ready to give to Theodore Parker,
Abolitionist and Heretic, a welcome to their pulpits. Finally,
about the year 1840, Rev. Oliver Stearns, the newly settled min-
ister, being himself of strong anti-slavery spirit, urged the feeling
of the parish into action, and brought about the occasion for
abolishing the custom. One Sunday he preached a vigorous
sermon on the subject. There was some bitterness, and some
withdrawal from the congregation. But the last occupant of
these galleries had, as above stated, taken her seat with the rest
of the congregation on the floor of the house ; and till her death
sat there a regular attendant at Sunday service.

80 THE NEGRO GALLERIES.

To-day one particularly notices in these galleries their dec-
orative value to the church, yet they have their peculiar historic
interest as the relic of an early New England custom.

Charles H. Porter.

Under the big elm at the foot of the Academy Hill is a
quaint old house, in the basement of which there once lived an
Acadian family brought here after the Nova Scotia expedition of
1755. Others of these poor French exiles were lodged in the
old Hersey house on Summer Street, and a few lived at West
Hinffham.

'&"

In 1792 Jeremiah Lincoln and Moses Whiton were appointed
by the First Parish " to keep the porch of the meeting-house from
being needlessly encumbered with women on the Sabbath."

The French officers quartered here in the War of 1812 took
home with them, as souvenirs of their stay, written lists of the
pretty girls in Hingham. Photographs were then unknown, and
the anxiety of our great-grandmothers to be enrolled on such a
list may be easily understood. Doubtless these bits of paper
puzzled many a French matron in after years, and perhaps a few
of them are still in existence, treasured as meaningless but
curious relics.

In the old days the whipping-post stood near Thaxter's
Bridge, which crosses the town brook west of the station.

COLONIAL HOUSES.

H INGHAM is justly proud of its
ancient dwellings, many of which
have been protected from ruin by the
pious care of the descendants of those
who built them over two centuries ao;o.
rare in our new country to find a family
for two hundred and fifty years under the roof-
the early settlers, but more than one home-
a this interesting and typical town has a record
of two centuries and a half of continuous family
occupation. While the original structure of these very old houses
is in some cases little more than a wing to the present building,
which has been enlarged as domestic purposes required, there
are some really excellent dwellings built in the middle of the
eighteenth century which are of a type distinctive of the period.
These two-story houses have a large chimney in the centre,
surrounded by an open space to which there is sometimes access
by a special door. This is presumably for safety from fire, as
the bricks were laid up with clay instead of mortar, and conse-
quently an air-space became imperative. The timbers are of
oak and very heavy ; the rooms low studded, sometimes not
more than seven feet high, with a great beam or summer-tree
visible below the plastering, which, by the way, is probably a
modern addition. Generally, the cellar is only under one
portion of the house, the foundations of the greater part of it
being laid on top of the ground.

.(81)

82 COLONIAL HOUSES.

The houses are entered by a door in the middle, which leads
into a small entry-wa}^ whence a narrow staircase, with a land-
ing and turn, leads to the upper front rooms. Sometimes
another stairway in the rear gives access to the back second
story ; and, occasionally, when the addition of new rooms has
made it necessary, still other ladder-like stairways have been
added, one house having as many as five. On either side of the
front door is a large room, sometimes seventeen or eighteen feet
square, with a wide fire-place. These rooms are often wholly
wainscoted or have hiGfh dadoes of wood surmounted by a chair-
rail. The rear rooms had a slanting roof, which sloped from the
high roof-tree to the one-story ell ; but this has now sometimes
given place to a modern construction at the back of the house.
Many of the outside doors keep their brass thumb-latches and
knockers, and in some of the humbler cottages the old-fashioned
leathern latch-string to lift the rough wooden latches of the
inside doors may still be seen. The windows have wooden
shutters within ; and the outside blinds on some of the more
ancient dwellings are constructed in one piece with very broad
slats.

The Thaxter Mansion. — Some of the handsomest of these
homesteads have been destroyed, but their fame is still fresh in
the village memory. One of them, the Thaxter Mansion on
North Street, which occupied the site of the present Roman
Catholic Church, was removed in 1864. It was a fine old
colonial mansion, with tapestried walls, broad, tiled fireplaces
and decorated door-panels. The tapestries were brought from
England by Samuel Thaxter, a son of Col. Samuel Thaxter, who
was a classmate of Dr. Gay. Mr. Thaxter's widow afterward

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COLONIAL HOUSES. 83

married the Rev. John Hancock, of Braintree, and was the
mother of the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In a blind passage in this house, to which a secret door gave
access, Tories from Marshfield were concealed during a search
made for them by the Committee of Safety. From this point
they were later successfully smuggled to Boston.

Thomas Thaxter, the first of this name in Hingham, bought
this house and land in 1652. It was occupied by Thaxters in a
direct line for five generations. The last of the name to live in
it was Major Samuel Thaxter. He was an officer in the French
and Indian Wars, and was present at the massacre of Fort
William Henry, when, having been captured by the Indians and
tied to a tree, he appealed for protection to two French officers
passing by. Pulling out his commission from the pocket of his
leather breeches, he said, " Is this the way you treat commis-
sioned officers?" Whereupon they unloosed him, and let him
go. He made his way during the night to Fort Edward, where
he arrived with feet torn and bleeding. Meantime at home he was
reported dead by a fellow townsman who had also escaped, and
Dr. Gay preached his funeral sermon. When Major Thaxter
finally arrived in Hingham, he met Mr. Caleb Bates, who was
driving home his cows. "Why, Major," cried Mr. Bates, in
astonishment, " we have just buried you ! " Major Thaxter's
liquor-case, punch-powl, knee-buckles, leather breeches, and the
compass which guided him through the trackless Canadian forests
are owned by a descendant living in Hingham ; also his colonial
four-posted bedstead, surmounted by a crown. Major Thaxter
removed to Bridgewater in 1771, and the estate was sold to
Elisha Loavilt.

84 COLONIAL HOUSES.

The ** Gamson House/' — Of the houses now standing,
perhaps the most ancient and interesting is that just east of the
Gushing House, known as the Perez Lincoln House. Joseph
Andrews drew this house-lot in 1635, and the original deed is in
existence. The house was built before the year 1640, and nine
generations of the same family have lived under its roof. It is
the best authenticated " garrison house " that we have. In King
Philip's "War, when the Indians attacked a coast town, they fre-
quently approached from the water-side. The old fort on the
hill protected the settlement, while the women and children took
refuge in the "block house." Several years ago, when this house
was newly clapboarded, there was found between the outer and
inner walls a filling apparently of clay stuck together with tough
grass and of the consistency of mortar. This made a thick
padding, bullet-proof, which also added to the warmth and
comfort of the interior. The present owner says that this filling
still remains on the front and ends of the main house.

The Barker House. — In the early part of the century
another old house stood on the site now occupied by the
National Bank. It was a quaint, unpainted building, hidden by
woodbine, with a great plane-tree in front. The smooth turf
was unbroken by stone walks, and crept up close to the ancient
walls. Here lived the Misses Barker, three intelligent, culti-
vated women of strong Tory principles and marked individuality
of character, who are still remembered by the older generation.
Across the road, to quote from a contemporary manuscript,
" lay the vegetable gardens of the neighbors, along the borders
of a little brook that ran through them towards the sea. . . .
On the right hand, onward to the limit of vision along the

THE GARRISON HOUSE. 1638.

THE FOLSOM HOUSE. TORN DOWN IN 1875.

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COLONIAL HOUSES. 85

public way, rise houses, shops of traffic and mechanic art,
Derby Academy, and the spire of an old wooden church."

The Lane Homestead. — East of the National Bank is the
estate on which stands what was once known as " John Norton's
Mansion House." Since 1820 it has been occupied by Colonel
Charles Lane and his descendants. The easterly part of the
house is much older than the rest, and dates back to the middle
of the seventeenth century. Here lived in his youth Colonel
Benjamin Church, the conqueror of King Philip. In 1679 the
three lots of land were sold to the Kev. John Norton, the second
pastor of the Old Church ; and later the homestead was occupied
for a time by his successor, Dr. Gay.

General Lincoln's House* — The house still occupied by tha
descendants of General Benjamin Lincoln, who received the
sword of Lord Cornwallis at the surrender of Yorktown, was
built in 1667 by Thomas Lincoln, the cooper, who came from
the west of England, and settled in Hingham in 1635-6. It
was added to in 1694, and again by General Lincoln in 1772.
This is a curious and interesting old homestead, with large, low,
wainscoted rooms, and still contains parts of the original
dwellino:.

'D'

The Union Hotel, — now the Gushing House, — is now owned
and well and neatly kept by George Gushing, hotel-keeper, livery-
stable proprietor, postmaster, chief of the fire department and
general utility man. It was probably built before the Eevolu-
tionary AYar by Dr. Bela Lincoln, a brother of General Lincoln,
as a central residence. Col. Nathan Rice, a prominent Feder-

86 COLONIAL HOUSES.

alist, resided in it after the war. Colonel Rice had a distinguished
career. Born in Sturbridge, Mass., he was at Harvard College,
was tutor or law-student with John Adams, and kept school,
married and settled in Hingham. When the war came on he
served at the siege of Boston, was military aide to General
Lincoln, was with Washington at the Battle of Yorktown an
officer in one of the continental regiments, and said by his
descendants to have been on Washington's staff, had a com-
mission in 1798-80 in the threatened war with France, repre-
sented the town in the General Court, and was active in trade
and shipping and in many town offices. He was an original
member of the Cincinnati.

The Gushing- Homestead. — Near the Cohasset line, in that
part of Hingham known as Rocky Nook, stand three houses
which merit the attention of the antiquary. Of these the
oldest is that known as the Gushing Homestead. It was built by
Daniel Gushing (son of Matthew, the first Gushing who came to
this country) in 1679, for Daniel's son, Peter. It has been
owned and occupied by Peter's descendants to the present time,
passing for five generations from father to son. It is now owned
by two daughters of Ned Gushing, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Tracy.
When the house was built, there was no road going by it,
Turkey Hill Lane being the only path from the " Plain " to
Gohasset. Some of the large timbers in the barn, showing the
mortises then used, came from the original " Old Ghurch." The
present " Old Ghurch " was built two years later.

The Gorham Lincoln House. — Not far away from this
homestead Stephen, the son of Pctei, built another in 1751.

GENERAL LINCOLN HOUSE.

FAMILY ROOM, GEN. LINCOLN HOUSE, WITH PORTRAIT OF THE GENERAL.

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COLONIAL HOUSES. 87

" For six generations," says a great-great-great-granddaughter,
"it was the happy home of an old country family." Its present
occupant is Miss Gertrude Edmands, the well-known singer.

The Beak House. — Beyond the Gushing homestead, oppo-
site the North Cohasset station, is the Beale house. This was
built in 1690-91, two stories high, and contains eighteen rooms.
The frame is of oak and, as it has always been kept in good
repair, it seems likely to last two hundred years longer.
Within, the soft satiny finish of unpainted wood has taken on the
rich, mellow hue that time alone can give. Beneath the high
windows are platforms, designed doubtless for the comfort and
pleasure of the busy housewife, who was thus enabled to " see
the passing" while busy with her needle, — a privilege many of
the colonial dames must have been denied. The furniture is
largely antique, much of it being as old as the house. From the
time of the settlement of the town the estate has been in the
name of Beale, passing down from generation to generation
without a break.

Tranquillity Lodge. — A typical living-room of colonial
times is to be found at Tranquillity Lodge on Main Street, now
owned and occupied by Miss Susan Barker Willard. She
inherited the house from her great-great-grandfather, Henry
Thaxter, a son of Major Samuel Thaxtcr above mentioned.
Back of the house stood Tranquillity Grove, Avhich was once
famous for its social and political gatherings and from which the
house was named.

The "William Lincoln House. — Among the pre-Revolu-

88 COLONIAL HOUSES.

tionaiy houses in Hingham is one on North Street, immediately
west of the General Lincoln homestead, which is of interest for
its antiquity. It has been occupied for many years by descend-
ants of Samuel Lincoln, and its children of to-day are descended
also frOm the Paul Revere stock.

Though the original structure built by Nicholas Jacobs on
the land granted to him in 1636 is no longer standing, as it was
partially or wholly destroyed by fire, some of its charred timbers
and boards are incorporated with the present building, which has
remained practically unchanged for over a hundred years ; and
its corner beaufet, the panelling about the fireplaces, and the
deep window-seats, all date from the last century. If the old
house ever played any part in the exciting Revolutionary period,
no record of it has come down to us. Its chief interest is that
it served to shelter a long line of New England yeomen.

The Old Gushing: House. — Half-way to Hingham Centre, on
Main Street, stands an old house the kitchen of which is probabl}''
part of the first dwelling built in 1692 by Daniel Gushing, son
of the original Matthew, on a grant of land made to him in 1635.
From this homestead came all the various branches of the Gushing
family in the United States. Opposite it, on the " Old Place,"
now owned by Mary Garoline Robbins, stood until 1885 the
handsome house known as the Matthew Gushing House, having
been built for Matthew Gushing probably at the same time and
by the same man who built the Peter Gushing homestead, since
the architecture of the two is similar. This house had the large,
low, heavily-beamed rooms and other characteristics of the houses
of the period ; but, having been uninhabited for years, it gradu-
ally fell to ruin, and had to be taken down.

THE NEW York]
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COLONIAL HOUSES. 89

The Hawkes Fearing House. — At Hingham Centre, opposite
the Public Library, stands the Fearing House, once a tavern, a
low, square-roofed dwelling, with two wings of considerable
antiquity. This house formerly had one of the hinged partitions
by which our forefathers were able to throw two rooms into one
when a large space was necessary for entertainments. It was a
century ago an inn and many exciting ecclesiastical conventions
were held there.

The Wilder House.— The old Wilder house at South Hing-
ham, practically unchanged for more than two centuries, is the
scene of the romance embodied in the novel by Mrs. Austin called
"Nameless Nobleman," though she places the story elsewhere.
Between its floors was once concealed during our colonial wars a
French nobleman called Francis LeBaron, who was cared for dur-
ing his trying confinement by Molly Wilder, whom he afterward
married.

The Shute House. — At South Hingham is also to be seen
the spacious dwelling once occupied by the Rev. Daniel Shute,
D.D., who was pastor of the Third (afterward the Second) Parish
of Hingham for fifty-six years, from Dec. 10, 1746, when he was
first installed. He was a warm friend of Dr. Gay, though they
were politically opposed, Dr. Shute being as earnest a Whig as
Dr. Gay was an ardent Tory. His son Daniel served under
Washington as a surgeon in the Continental Army.

The homestead lot was bought in 1754, and the house still
occupied by his descendants was erected soon after. It has six
rooms on each floor of the main house, and with the ell has nine-
teen rooms. A number of rooms are panelled to the ceiling on

90 COLONIAL HOUSES.

one side. ]Many of the fireplaces are still in use and much of the
old furniture. One chamber is preserved in the ancient style
with the original wall-paper more than one hundred years old, a
high canopy bed, a chest of drawers, etc. A clock which has
lasted more than two hundred years stands in the dining-room.
In the hall is a candle-stick six feet high, the candle holder sliding
up and down after the same fashion as a modern piano lamp,
showino; that there is " nothino- new under the sun," John
Hancock was a student in Rev. Dr. Shute's household and the
chair which came with the boy and in which he sat is still in the
house.

Richard Henry Stoddard. — On North Street not far from the
Cove was born Reuben Henry Stodder. His father was early
lost at sea and his mother moved to New York when Reuben was
a small boy. As is well known, he became a poet of note, whose
verses are still read and form a part of our literature. He died
only a few years ago. It is noticeable that he was not altogether
content with his original homely name of Reuben Henry Stodder
and changed it to the higher sounding one of Richard Henry
Stoddard.

The Malhon House. — The second house on the left going
west from the corner of Thaxter and Lincoln Streets formerly
stood on the southwest corner of those streets on what is now
the great sloping lawn in front of Miss Bradley's residence.
It is now owned by her and occupied by some of her employes.
It was originally the home of Daniel Lincoln, the far-back
maternal ancestor of the present Bouve family. The owner pre-
vious to the Bradleys was Theodore R. Glover, a native of Boston,

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COLONIAL HOUSES. 91

but after his marriage a well-known resident of our town for many
years. In his youth on a gunning trip in Marshfield, he met
Mary Thomas Malbon, who became his wife. Her father Micajah
Malbon and his wife coming from England to this country were
shipwrecked and thrown on shore at Marshfield. They were
cared for by Mr. John Thomas in his house, which he later sold
to Daniel Webster, who took an interest in them and their
daughter and with whom they were on familiar terms. A prayer
book is still shown by another daughter which the mother carried
next her breast during the thirty-six hours she was washed by
the waves and the imprint of which on her breast lasted all her
life. After Mr. Glover's marriage he established the Malbon
family in the house above referred to. The father taught in the
public schools of Marshfield, Cohasset, and Hingham, in which
town he was living at the time when his daughter Mary, on a
visit at the Thomas home in Marshfield, first met Mr. Glover.
There was a son who commanded one of Mr. Glover's ships and
four other daughters who married and were prominent in Boston
and elsewhere, and whose sons and daughters have been a good
deal identified with the South Shore.

The Humphrey or Bulfinch House* — This house in excel-
lent preservation stands on Cottage Street next to the house on
the southwest corner of that and Ship Street. It is a good type
of the old-style plain square house with large rooms on either
side of its broad front door. It appears from Sufi'olk Deeds that
it formerly stood on Bowdoin Street near Bulfinch in Boston.
It was then of three stories, the lowest of brick. In 1841 it
was sold to Ilersey Stowell and others of Ilingham who, to
build a new structure on the site, removed and sold it for $100

92 COLONIAL HOUSES.

to Capt. Moses L. Humphrey, a mason and contractor of
Hingham. He took away the two upper stories — the present
house. It was brought in parts down the harbor to Hingham
in a packet, and as the tide then reached nearly to the present
site of the house, Cottage and Otis Streets not then existing, it
was readily put on that site and reerected in its present form.
Some of us well remember the highly-colored landscape papering
or painting on the walls of the main room, not unlike that in
the Quincy Thaxter or Wompatuck club house. The Humphrey
family owned and occupied the house till some thirty years ago.
It is now owned by S. Henry Hooper.

There is a tradition that it was occupied by the British in
Boston during the Revolutionary "War and that when taken down
there, a pot of gold was found in the brick work (see Hingham
Journal of Feb. 3, 1905).

The Soother Hoose, — This is at the foot of Ship Street
facing the Cove and more than a hundred years old. There was
in the old days a good deal of shipbuilding in Hingham and
Leavitt Souther's shipyard was about where the Hingham Yacht
Club now is. He married a granddaughter of Thomas Melvill of
Boston, who was one of the famous Boston Tea Party. Her
ancient little piano is now owned by Miss Sara J. Lincoln.
Some of the tea which he carried home from that raid was
brought to Hingham and was preserved till recently by the
Souther family. Melvill's grandson, Herman Melville, who
added an e to the name, married a daughter of Chief Justice
Shaw and was the author of those South Sea Island stories,
Typee, Omoo, etc., and of other stories which sixty years ago
were popular reading. Thomas Melvill died in 1832 and

COLONIAL HOUSES. 93

to the last wore the cocked hat and knee breeches of 1775 in
which costume, in his tottering old age, perhaps the last survivor
of the Tea Party, he suggested to Oliver Wendell Holmes
the poem of "The Last Leaf." Mrs. Samuel Downer was a
granddauo-hter of Thomas Melvill, whence came the name of
Melville Gardens, which Mr. Downer adopted in his Downer
Landing development.

The Daniel "WeBster Statue. — The attention of everybody
cominor to Hingham from Boston in the railroad train is attracted
by the statue of Webster which stands on the grounds of Mrs.
Geo. M. Soule, between her house and the track. The house
stands on the lot assigned at the settlement of Hingham to Samuel
Lincoln, the ancestor of Abraham Lincoln. The statue was origi-
nally the figure head of a Boston ship and came into the posses-
sion of Mr. Soule at least fifty years ago and has since then stood
in its present place. It is in excellent preservation and is most
assiduously cared for. Mrs. Soule is a granddaughter of John
Thomas of Marshfield who sold to Webster the farm on which he
lived and died. Webster was fond of fishing and gunning and
when he first went to Marshfield for that purpose asked Mr. and
Mrs. Thomas to entertain him in their house. When he bought
it he insisted that they should remain in it, which they did till
Mr. Thomas's death. It is a pretty tribute to the great orator's
consideration that during all that time he had Mr. and Mrs.
Thomas occupy their accustomed seats at the head of the table.
His relations with the family were those of a cordial friendship
and Mrs. Soule remembers that in her youth she often held a
hand at whist with him.

94 COLONIAL HOUSES.

Mrs. Rowson's Residence. — On the southeast corner of
Burdett Avenue and Lincoln Street was a small cottage, now
gone. In this Lieutenant Has well of the British navy, who was
an English revenue oiEcial at Hull just before the Revolutionary
War, was for two or three years after it began detained as a
prisoner at large. He was then taken to Abington by the pro-
vincial authorities because there he was farther from the British
reach. His daughter, Susanna Has well, then a child of fourteen
or fifteen years, and who at a later period returned with her
father to England, l:)ecame a noted authoress. She wrote many
stories, the best known of which is "Charlotte Temple," now
forgotten, but a great favorite in both England and America
with our forbears. The scene of that and some other stories is
laid in our vicinity. In one of them is a detailed experience of
Mrs. Kowson in her childhood, on the occasion of a skirmish
between some American soldiers, who rowed from Hull to the
Boston liffhthouse and burnt it, and the British sailors and
marines who pursued them. The death and burial of one of the
latter, which the child herself witnessed, made a deep impression
on her mind.

Mrs. Rowson and her husband, who was a singer of some
note, went upon the stage in England, and later in Philadelphia,
and still later in the old Federal Street Theatre in Boston. Leav-
insfthe sta^e Mrs. Rowson became a teacher in Medford, and still
later had a very successful and fashionable young ladies' school
in Boston. Among her pupils were the daughters of leading
Boston families, a list of whose names survives and recalls the
ancient flavor of its best citizens. She was also a prolific writer
of verse, much of which was published. She died in Boston in
1824.

a.
O

_j
O

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COLONIAL HOUSES. 95

The Tower House. — This house stands on the east side of
Main Street near the brook that runs between Hinghani Centre
and South Hingham. It was built by John Tower, an original
settler, near the middle of the seventeenth century. A well dug
by him is still in use. The house has been in possession of his
direct descendants ever since, and although additions and repairs
have been made, the original structure is still standing and con-
stitutes a part of the Tower homestead to-day. It has been put
in excellent condition and is a picturesque feature. Two years
ago in May the descendants of John Tower formed a family
Tower Association, and in large numbers celebrated the three
hundredth anniversary of his birth.

The Old Ordinary. — The tavern or " Old Ordinary," the
third oldest house in Hingham, stands on a low hill just off the
Boston Turnpike. The land was granted to Joseph Andrews on
the settlement of the towm in 1635, and here the main portion
of the house was built about 1650. The front door and two
windows to the right mark its original length. The two windows
to the left show the next addition made about 1740. Further
additions were built across the back and at the extreme right.
The dance hall, an addition at the rear, was removed about 1836.
The old rooftree could tell many interesting stories of Peter
Hobart and other first settlers, of slaves who labored here in the
early days, of French Canadians exiled from Grand Pre, of
English prisoners during the Revolution, of Daniel Webster,
and perhaps of fugitive slaves. From 1650 the Old Ordinary
remained for two hundred and twenty-three years in the posses-
sion of some member, near or remote, of the Andrews family

96 COLONIAL HOUSES.

who built it. It is now owned by the minister of the First
Parish.

The Folsom or Foulsom-Cushing-Spfague Housc^ — formerly

situated at Hingham Centre (or " Little Plain " in the ancient
vernacular), stood where is now the residence of J. O. Burdett,
and was more noticeable from the presence of a single large tree
which overshadowed it. In the Hingham Journal of Aug. 20,
1875, the late Fearing Burr says: "The old Sprague house on
Main Street, Hingham Centre, having become untenantable from
age, is this week being taken down.

" Tradition fixes the time of its erection in 1654 ; the frame
is principally of oak and the posts are enlarged at their connec-
tion with the plates, like those seen in the Old Meeting House.
Though for a long period the property of the Sprague family
passing down in unbroken succession, it is generally believed
that the house was built, and for a time occupied, by John
Folsom, who was here as early as 1643-4."

In his History of Hingham, Solomon Lincoln says :

'" John Folsom married Miss Oilman, sister of the wife of
Daniel Gushing (son of the original Mathew Cushing), and when
Folsom removed to New Hampshire, with his family, Daniel
Cushins: bought the estate."

Mr. Isaac Sprague (grandfather of Mr. Isaac Sprague the
painter, who illustrated Audubon's Birds) was the Sprague
whose descendants occupied the house for generations.

Roseneath, a Seventeenth Century Cottage. — On Main
Street, well back from the road under the shelter of the hillside,

ROSEN EATH COTTAGE.

DOORWAY — ROSENEATH COTTAGE.

fUfillC LIBRARY

COLONIAL HOUSES. 97

and surrounded by the high elm trees for which Hingham is
noted, stands the cottage owned by Miss Susan B. Willard.

It has twice been moved. A persistent tradition asserts
that when the carpenters were at work on the oak frame of the
old meeting-house they kept their tools in this cottage, which at
that time stood in close proximity to the church, and this tradi-
tion is the only warrant for the statement that the little building
antedates 1681. It is thus put among the oldest houses in the
United States.

One of its interesting features is the " glory hole," which was
at once the vegetable cellar, the ice-chest, and the safe deposit
vault of our ancestors.

It was not, as might at first appear, waste space. In order
to obtain the thickness of brick wall needed for the deep ovens
and the fireplaces it was necessary to build the massive chimney
in a shape not unlike a pyramid, very round at the base and
sloping in a sharp angle to the roof which was only a story and a
half from the ground.

This left in the middle of the chimney a considerable space,
conical in shape, and broad enough at the bottom to make a siz-
able and convenient storeroom. In the winter it kept the
vegetables from freezing ; in the summer it kept the milk and
butter cool. And throughout the year the family valuables were
here safe from harm.

This queer little brick closet which measures four by six feet,
is fireproof, warm in the winter and cool in summer. It suggests,
too, what one now pays every year for, a safe deposit box.

It may be that the present generation sometimes sighs for
the return of the glory hole, and the simple way of living it
represented.

98 COLONIAL HOUSES.

Jabez Wilder House, — familiarly known as the " Rainbow-
roofed " house, is on the right hand side of Main Street as one
comes up the first rise from Hingham Centre.

Jahez, son of the first Edward, the ancestor of all who have
borne this surname in Hingham and vicinity, lived on the paternal
homestead and was a brother of the charming " Molly Wilder "
in jVIiss Austen's story. In his will, dated June, 1728, he gives
to his son Jabez the " New dwellinij-house on the side of the high-
way at South Hingham," and he mentions a black oak tree
" standing on the boundary line between brother Ephraim's
homestead and mine." The inventory of his estate includes in a
long list of personal property, books, arms, gold plate, hour-
glass, side saddle pillion, seven sdp (?) of bees, a loom and
weaving tackle.

To give the full details of all the interesting habitations of
the colonial period which still are to be found in our well-pre-
served old town, is impossible within the limits of a brief article ;
but in historic interest, in picturesque charm and characteristic
detail, they compare favorably with those of any village in Massa-
chusetts, and are tenderly and respectfully cherished by those who
have had the good fortune to inherit them. Many of them were
taverns, in some of which there were British prisoners during the
Revolutionary War, of whom quaint traditions still linger.

THE ' MOLLY WILDER " HOUSE.

THE JABEZ WILDER OR "RAINBOW ROOF" HOUSE.

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DR. EBENEZER GAY.

IF it should be asked what one figure stands out in the pre-
Revolutionary local history of Hingham, there is little doubt
that the answer would be "Dr. Gay." It was not merely that
for almost seventy years he was the pastor of the church, at a
time when the church was the town, but he was also a man of
extraordinary dignity and strength of character, who commanded
universal respect and affection. Hingham was never disloyal to
her minister, though he was a Tory, and set his face against
the cause she was fighting for. The small boys ran from him
in the street, so great was their awe of his stern presence ; yet
his friends claimed for him a beaut}'- of countenance difiicult for
us to imagine who have only his portrait to look upon. Great
indeed must have been the personal force of the man to have left
such an imprint upon his day and generation. Many anecdotes
are told of him which are as valuable as columns of biography.

On one occasion a deputation of Boston gentlemen came
down to remonstrate with him on the liberality of his preaching.
Suspecting their errand. Dr. Gay received them with all cor-
diality, and, before hostilities could commence, related to them
the adventures of his friend Dr. Chauncy, who had just crossed
the ocean. His vessel had encountered a violent storm, and
destruction had seemed inevitable ; " but," said Dr. Gay, " with
the captain at the helm, and only his voice heard above the storm,
crying, ' Steady, boys, steady ! ' the good ship sailed into port,
colors flying and all hands safe." Like President Lincoln's
advisers in a similar situation, the guests were somewhat discon-

(99)

5ivruio

100 DR. EBENEZER GAY.

certed ; and, having partaken of their host's hospitality, they
departed without alluding to the object of their visit.

One day Dr. Gay was riding to Boston in company with a
friend, when they came in sight of the old gallows at Boston
Neck. "Where would you he, my friend," inquired his com-
panion, jocosely, ""if that gallows had its due? " "Riding alone
to Boston ! " was Dr. Gay's prompt response.

Mr. Nye (the schoolmaster) and Dr. Gay were once invited
to a party given by Colonel Thaxter to the governor and his
council. Mr. Nye, who was a Harvard graduate, professed great
trepidation at meeting so august an assembl}^ and asked if it was
probable that his own scholarly ability would be recognized.

"My dear sir," said Dr. Gay, "say nothing whatever about
it; and I am sure His Honor will never suspect it."

In an old beaufet in Dr. Gay's house was found the follow-
ing letter, written to his " children," then in middle life them-
selves :

Dedham, June 19, 1784.
Dear Children, — I am by the importunity of my friends, contrary to my
purpose, detained here. Mr. Thacher comes to preach for me. You will
give him suitable enievtablevnent. He will be very acceptable to the people.
Be not anxious about your poor father. He is in ordinaiy health. Colonel
Pond intends to bring me home on Monday. You may expect me by noon.
With submission to Providence, to which I commend you,

Ebenezer Gay.

P.S. — Upon second thoughts, Colonel Pond agrees with me to carry me
to Weymouth ; and you must send Aaron with our chaise to General Level's
in the forenoon.

This letter not only shows the writer's tender relations with
his family, but also his sense of fun in the transcription of

DR. EBENEZER GAY. 101

" entertainment." The ride to Dedham in those days was a long
one. The Hingham and Quincy bridges were not built for
twenty-five years after. General Lovel probably lived at the
head of Fore River, now Weymouth Landing.

The familiar story is told of Dr. Gay that one night he lay in
wait with a dark lantern to discover who was taking hay from
his barn. Presently the thief came along, carrying a large
bundle of hay upon his back. Taking the candle from the
lantern, and following softly after, Dr. Gay thrust it into the
middle of the hay, which was presently in a fine blaze, to the
great terror of the bearer. A few days after the culprit appeared
to confess his misdeed. He was convinced that fire from heaven
had been sent to punish him, and even Dr. Gay's explanation
failed to change his belief.

Knowing his Tory principles, the Committee of Safety once
visited the minister to inquire what arms he had in the house.
Their courage forsook them when they were fairly in his presence,
and it was with faltering hesitation that they finally made known
their errand. The good doctor looked at them for a moment with
mild reproach before he answered, laying his hand on the large
Bible which lay open upon his table, " Gentlemen, these are my
arms ; and I trust they will prove sufiicient."

THE GAY HOUSE ON NORTH STREET, HINGHAM,

AND THE OLD TORY.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES speaks somewhere of the
house standing "gable end to the street," in a manner
implying that all proper old houses do stand in that position, but
the house on North Street built by Dr. Ebenezer Gay stands
eaves side to the street, and is certainly as proper and respec-

(102)

THE GAY HOUSE AND THE OLD TORY. 103

table, as an old house need be, from age, appearance and history.
Dr. Gay preached in the old meeting-house of the First Parish
from 1718 to 1787, and some time between the former date and
1750 it is said his house was built.

Durino; its building he lived in the next house to the West,
since altered and enlarged into two dwellings at present occupied
by Mrs. Lane and Mr. Nelson, and one of the many stories told
of the parson was of his well, dug probably while he was living
in that house.

It is a very dry, sandy hillside where the house stands and
the well was sunk, and after going down through dry ground for
many feet the well diggers urged the parson to give it up and
try elsewhere.

By Saturday night, utterly discouraged, they told him it was
useless to dig deeper, for no water could be found there and they
must begin again in a more promising place. Sunday morning
he preached an eloquent sermon, taking for his text. Numbers,
xxi, 17; Spring up, O Well; which so inspired the well dig-
gers that they went to work Monday morning with renewed hope
and soon struck a stream of clear, cold water which is flowing to
this day. And the story goes on that when in times of drought
the neighbors' wells ran dry the parson's well yielded an abun-
dance for all.

The house standina: on a hillside above the street and eaves
side toward it is, except for the addition of the projecting front
entrance, a wood shed and a chimney, the counterpart of the
Noah's Ark of our childhood. It is just about as simple as
an ark in its lines and trimmings but well proportioned and
dignified.

The timbers are of hard wood, hand hewed, the walls are

104 THE GAY HOUSE AND THE OLD TORY.

filled in with brick and double sheathed on the outside. The
clapboards, evidently made by hand, are in short lengths and
overlap each other at the ends with a long tapering chamfer.

The interior finish is simple except on either side of the fire-
place in the two main rooms down-stairs, where there is some
well-made wooden paneling, and the wooden mantel-pieces are
quite elaborate.

In the eighteenth century the plumb, level and square were
evidently not accounted of much use as aids to construction, for
there is hardly a plumb line, a level surface or a square corner in
the house, nevertheless it is a sturdy, well built structure which
has stood the test of time as few modern structures will be able
to do.

It has sheltered the Gay family for upward of two hundred
years and has never been out of their hands, and children of the
sixth generation from Dr. Gay now live in it.

THE OLD TORY.

The old mahogany secretary now in the house built by
Parson Gay on North Street has been known in the family for
many years as the "Old Tory," because its original owner,
Martin Gay of Boston, son of the minister, was a prominent
Tory during the Revolution.

"Where it was made or when it came into the family, are not
known, but that it was in his house in Union Street before the
Revolution is pretty well established by the tradition that it was
taken by its owner to Nova Scotia when the British troops left
Boston in 1776 and was brought back by him when the war was
over.

Martin Gay was prescribed and banished by the Patriot

THE OLD TORY.

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THE GAY HOUSE AND THE OLD TORY. 105

Government, and when the British left Boston he went with
them, taking some of his family and some of his portable prop-
erty beyond the reach of confiscation or theft. He had so little
faith in the honesty of the " rebels," probably supposing them
to be no better than the English soldiers who had looted the
stores of his patriot friends during their absence with the army,
that he packed the silver communion service of the West Church,
Boston, of which he, as deacon, was the custodian, in the
drawers of the secretary and took that with him also. The ser-
vice was returned when, in due course, order was established in
Boston, but in the meanwhile many unpleasant things were said
of the Deacon.

After his death the Old Tory spent a half century where it
now stands, and then, having been bequeathed to Sydney Howard
Gay, stood for another half century in his house on Staten
Island, N.Y.

It is a well-designed piece of furniture and a fine example
of mechanical skill in mahogany and solid brass, but it does not
show to advantage in the low studded room of the old house,
where the gilt eagle with spreading wings over the cornice
cannot stand upright on his perch.

Completely hidden in the interior, there is a secret recess
which would be hard to discover without knowledge of the cun-
ning fastening which protects it. In the recess there is room
for two small boxes which might have held enough gold pieces to
have made a comfortable fortune one hundred and fifty years ago.

Martin Gay.

THE HAZLITTS.

SOME sixty or more years ago (1835-38) Margaret, only sur-
viving daughter of the Eev. William Hazlitt, wrote her
" Recollections of a Visit to America," which she made with her
parents and her brothers John and William in 1783. Margaret
was a pleasant writer, and related with great distinctness the
various scenes through which the family passed. She was then
twelve years of age, John fifteen, and William five years old.
After landing in New York, the family went to Philadelphia.
The father, not being able to find steady professional employ-
ment, set out for Boston in June, 1784, where he preached for a
time in the Brattle Street Church. The family followed in
August. From Perth Amboy, N.J., they went on to New York
in a little sloop, and thence by a coasting vessel to Newport,
R.I. They reached their final destination on the second day
from New York, passing through Jamaica Plain, the beautiful
scenery of which Margaret describes in terms of praise.

They lodged at a boarding-house on State Street, kept by a
Mrs. Gray and her two sisters, where they remained three weeks,
a reunited family. They then went to a farmhouse in Lower
Dorchester, kept by a Mr. Withington. Here they lived seven
weeks, when the father had an ofi*er of a good and cheap house
at Weymouth. The family were two days in getting settled in
that ancient town, and on the way stayed over night at the house
of Judge Cranch in Braintree. The house in Weymouth belonged
to the wife of John Quincy Adams, then ambassador to England.

This house contained a very large and old painting, said to

(106)

A HAZLITT PANEL.

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A8T0R, LENSX ANB
TILBEN F0UN»AT(0N8.

THE HAZLITTS. 107

have been one of the first of Copley's, who afterward became a
painter of great celebrity in Boston. He was the father of Lord
Lyndhurst, the English statesman. Copley and his family
removed to England before the Eevolutionary War, and the}'
never returned to the United States.

On this picture the youthful Margaret used to gaze with
intense delight. It was the story of Jacob and Esau. The
meeting of the brothers, the camels and cattle, the followers on
either side and in the background marching up between the hills
and seeming to vanish in the air, completed her enchantment ;
and she ever bore the scene in remembrance as one of the joys of
her girlhood.

William Hazlitt, the younger brother, afterward became the
celebrated English critic and essayist. Being then not six years
of age, he was kept in the house during the heat of the day, and
not allowed out until four in the afternoon. Margaret relates
her experiences of the Hingham and Boston road, from which
she had excellent views of Bunker's Hill and Dorchester Heights.

Their father, the reverend minister, would sometimes go to
Boston to deliver lectures upon the Evidences of Christianity,
taking the older boy, John, with him. At that time the Rev.
Ebenezer Gay was the Unitarian minister at Hingham.* In
1785 the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt occasionally went to Salem to preach.
While living in Weymouth, the boy John spent a great deal of
his time in Hingham, where he painted many portraits. Perhaps

* The elder Hazlitt frequently exchanged with Dr. Gay, and used to bring his son
William with him. The story is that the little lad sat in the pulpit behind his father ; and we
may imagine England's future essayist curbing his boyish restlessness through the long
sermon, under the eyes of the congregation, — a congregation wiiicli often numbered
between five and seven hundred, since in those days there were few stay-at-homes from
church.

108 THE HAZLITTS.

some of his earliest efforts may still be in the old town, and it is
not unlikely that he ornamented the panels in the old Thaxter
house with his paintings of local scenery. The writer of this
article passed a considerable portion of every year, almost a half-
century ago, in Hingham, where his ancestors and his wife's
ancestors were born ; and, without being decidedly certain, he
thinks that the name Hazlitt was in some way connected with
these panel paintings. They are such works as a young and
untaught artist would be likely to produce.

At that period the Rev. Mr. Freeman was the minister at
King's Chapel in Boston, and he was aided in preparing the
liturgy by Mr. Hazlitt. The family removed to Upper Dor-
chester, and finally returned to England in 1784, when William
was educated at the Unitarian College at Hackley. He began
life as an artist ; but he threw up this profession in disgust,
although his work pleased his friends. He then removed to
London, and became a Parliamentary reporter for several of the
daily journals. Thus commenced a literary career which termi-
nated only at his death in 1830. Alison in his "History of
Europe," Professor John Wilson (Christopher North) in Black-
wood, Lord Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, Sergeant Thomas
Noon Talfourd, the author of the beautiful drama of "Ion," all
gave the greatest praise to William Hazlitt, who stands to-day
at the very head of British critics and essayists.

Benjamin F. Stevens.

The following extract from the Worcester Spy, written by
one of its correspondents, relates to the Quincy Thaxter House,
now the Wompatuck Club. It was written more than thirty

THE HAZLITTS. 109

years ago, when the homestead was still occupied by a member
of the Thaxter family.

Last week I was in Hingham in a house two hundred or more years old
— a house modernized just enough to be comfortable, but not enough to lose
its thoroughly antique air. The fi'ont door with eighteen small panes of
glass opens from a simple broad piazza into a large low parlor, not low
enough for discomfort even under the great beams which cross the ceiling,
but quite low enough to mark the age of the building.

No stairs are visible. They are crowded into small entries at each end
of the house ; but two other parlors lead from the central one on the south
and west and are connected with it by wide doors which stand open and give
an air of magnificent space and royal hospitality. But the crowning glory
of the room that makes it unique is its painted panels. There are seventeen
of them, the largest two feet square ; the smallest running round one of the
doors less than two inches wide and two feet or more long.

These are all painted in landscape or Japanese-looking plants in brown
shading on reds and yellows, and were done when the house was built. They
are in perfect preservation. One scene is Boston Harbor, one the old Harvard
College green with the first building there. The others seem to be composi-
tions with towers or ruins. They have not much artistic merit, but are curious
and add grt-atly to the charm of the rooms, which are furnished with handsome
old furniture.

THE THAXTER, NOW THE WOMPATUCK CLUB,

HOUSE.

THERE were settlers at Bare Cove as early as 1633. An
order of the General Court, adopted and entered Sept. 2,

1635, is as follows : " The name of Bare Cove is changed and
hereafter to be called Hingham." This latter date is the one
accepted as that of the permanent settlement of the town.

All the land which is included in the territory bounded by
North Street, West Street, South Street, and the Mill Pond was
known as the " Town Street " and all the earliest grants of
houselots " butted " on the " Town Street." The first grants of
houselots, thirty in number, were made Sept. 18, 1635. They
extended the entire length of what is now North Street. July 3,

1636, houselots were granted on what is now South Street.
About five acres was the usual amount of land granted to each.
Among them was the following :

'• Given unto John Farro by the Town of Hingham, for a House Lot,
five acres of land ; Butting upon the Town Street northward ; and upon
William Ludkin's land and the Common southward ; bounded with the land
of Thomas Lincoln, miller, eastward, and with the land of George Russell
westward."

This was the third lot westward from the corner of Bachelor
Street, now Main Street.

April 27, 1680, Joseph Homes, of Boston, Trustee of Jane
Bate, widow of Lieut. Benjamin Bate, who died in 1678, con-
veyed to Ensign John Thaxter several houses and lands, marshes
and commons, among them one houselot of five acres bounded

(110)

THE THAXTER, NOW WOMPATUCK CLUB, HOUSE. Ill

on the Town Street north, Daniel Gushing south, Nathaniel Beal
east, and Joseph Bate west, with the dwelling house and all the
barns, etc., which Benjamin Bate purchased of John Farrow
[Suflfolk Deeds, 15-194].

Ensign John Thaxter or his descendants subsequently owned
all the land on South Street from the corner of Main Street
nearly to the present lot of William O. Lincoln.

A part of the original grant to John Farro, which was pur-
chased in 1680 by Ensign John Thaxter, remained in possession
of members of the Thaxter family for nearly two hundred years,
when it was conveyed to Bishop Williams, April 26, 1877, and
became the parochial residence of the Roman Catholic priest of
the Church of St. Paul. At a later date the property adjacent
to the church was purchased for a parochial residence and the
South Street estate was conveyed to Mrs. Ellen C. Keenan, who
occupied it for a few years and July 30, 1900, conveyed it to the
Wompatuck Club.

Whether or not a part of the present building is the dwelling
house " which Benjamin Bate purchased of John Farrow " and
which was purchased by Ensign John Thaxter, in 1680, it is
impossible to determine. If it was not then standing it must
have been built shortly after that date, for.the writer has evidence
of its existence in 1695. The house originally had two rooms in
front, the " Hall," which includes the easterly half of the large
assembly room of the club, and the "Front Room," now the
reception room, on the first floor, and the two rooms above,
with the front entry and the stairs between. The front door
opened directly into the " Hall." The westerly end of the house
was added when Mr. Quincy Thaxter was married, in 1786.
Interesting evidence of this addition may be seen in the attic,

112 THE THAXTER, NOW WOMPATUCK CLUB, HOUSE.

where a portion of the original westerly end remains with the
clapboards still upon it. At or about the time this addition was
made it was the only house standing on South Street between
Main Street and the " Anchor Tavern " or Bates House, which
stood on the site of the house first occupied by the club. All
the other houses now standing within these limits were built on
land purchased from the Thaxters.

From 1783 to 1787 Eev. William Hazlitt, a Unitarian
clergyman, from England, was in this country. His eldest son,
John Hazlitt, born in England in 1768, came here with his
family and while here painted the panels in the assembly room
of the club. He was afterwards a miniature painter and painted
the miniature of his father, which hangs over the fireplace.
John Hazlitt died in England in 1837. His brother, William
Hazlitt, was the noted essayist. The miniature of Rev. William
Hazlitt was presented to the Wompatuck Club by Miss Susan
Barker Willard, in 1901. A long and interesting account of
the Hazlitts in America is in print. They lived a part of the
time in Weymouth and the father preached several times for Dr.
Gay, in the Old Meeting-house, and his son sat in the pulpit
with him. It is said he was desirous of securing the position of
minister of the First Parish to succeed Dr. Gay who was then
nearly ninety years old, but the desire was not fulfilled.

In 1835, Miss Harriet Martineau, the eminent authoress,
while on a visit to this country from England, was the recipient
of social attentions in this house, where she was met by many of
our town's people.

It is interestinoj to note the fact that there were two houses in
Hingham, near to each other, built upon a similar plan, and both
these houses were Thaxter houses, owned and occupied by mem-

THE THAXTER, NOW WOMPATUCK CLUB, HOUSE. 113

bers of the same family. One stood where the Catholic Church
now stands, opposite Broad Bridge, and the other is the club
house. In each the front entrance was directly into a large
"Hall" or square room, with the front entry and stairs at one
side, and in each house there were panels painted by John Hazlitt.
The writer knows of but one other house in Hingham constructed
on this plan.

After the purchase of this house by the Wompatuck Club,
in 1900, additions and changes were made to adapt it to club
uses. The bowling alley was added, a new front porch was
built and some internal changes were made, the most conspicu-
ous of which was the removal of one of the chimneys and some
partitions, in order to throw as much space as possible into the
assembly room. The beams in the ceiling indicate to a certain
extent the earlier arrangement of the rooms. In 1904 a con-
siderable addition was made to the billiard room. In all the
changes in the older parts of the house its ancient features have
been carefully preserved and it is somewhat remarkable that the
quaint painted panels have been allowed to remain in a fine state
of preservation by the successive owners through so many years.

The Wompatuck Club was incorporated April 24, 1897.
It takes its name from Wompatuck, who was the Chief Sachem
of Massachusetts, which included Hingham, and who, with two
other Indians, in 1665, conveyed all the territory of Hingham to
the inhabitants thereof that they might " quietly possess and
enjoy " the same. The " mark " of Wompatuck on the deed was
adopted by the club as the emblem on its seal. For the first
three years of its existence the club occupied the house of
Mr. William O. Lincoln, on South Street, which was the site of
the old " Anchor Tavern " where LaFayette was once entertained.

114 THE THAXTER, NOW WOMPATUCK CLUB, HOUSE.

LaFayette is thus described by one who saw him here in Septem-
ber, 1778 :

•' Gen. LaFayette was here in the war and went to Nantasket. The
French Fleet lay in the roads. He stopped at the Anchor Tavern and spent
the night. He had one person only with him, an aide or waiter, LaFayette
wore buff waistcoat and breeches, boots and spurs, plain blue coat, gilt
buttons with some ornament and device on them, — I think no epaulettes, —
three cornered hat and cockade. They came on horseback, wore swords, and
had pistols. The aide wore more ornament than LaFayette."

Photographs of the " Anchor Tavern " and of the Thaxter
House opposite Broad Bridge, previously alluded to, hang in the
club house.

Francis H. Lincoln.

A TRUE FISH STORY.

THE Gushing mansion at Kocky Nook is one of the oldest
houses in Hingham, dating back to the seventeenth cen-
tury. It is a quaint old house, with great bare beams crossing
its low-ceiled rooms ; and it stands under the shadow of a huge
elm-tree, which bears the legend nailed over its heart, " Trans-
planted in 1729."

Here, about fifty years ago, was gathered a gay company of
summer guests, among whom was Mr. Epes Sargent, then the
able editor of the Boston Transcript; and here, one pleasant
afternoon, a party was formed to go and " see the fishes fed."
A footpath led from the rear of the house, through meadow and
woodland, to an open field where stood a large iron foundry on
the borders of a lovely pond, from which Weir River wanders to
the sea. The scene was beautiful, but wild and solitary in the
extreme, save for the foundry buildings and the home of the
proprietor.

A request to see " the little girl who fed the fishes " brought
out a child of about six years, dressed in a pink calico gown,
cut low in the neck and with short sleeves, as was then the
fashion. On her head she wore a large blue gingham sunbonnet,
with ample cape to keep her from " tanning," one of the seven
cardinal sins in those days. In her hand was a little willow
basket containing some pieces of sweet white bread. With a
gravity beyond her years, she led her guests to the border of the
pond, where seated upon a large flat rock, she proceeded to call
the fishes. " Pou-ty ! pou-t}' ! pou-ty ! " called the childish

(115)

116 A TRUE FISH STORY.

voice, which went echoing over the Avater. The first syllable
was long drawn out ; and the last had a rising inflection, irre-
sistibly funny.

It proved a magic cry, however, for up from the slimy
depths came a score or more of ugly-looking horned pouts,
crowding and pushing around her little hand, which held a piece
of bread beneath the water.

Over and over each other they rolled in their eagerness to
get the first bite ; while the child patted them on the head or let
them slip through her hands, carefully avoiding pressure on the
sharp horn concealed in the dorsal fin.

" Tur-ty ! tur-ty ! tur-ty ! " rang the plaintive voice again ;
and widening rings in the water, here and there, at varying dis-
tances from the shore, betrayed the presence of the turtles,
whose shining black heads popped up to reconnoitre. " Come,
turty, good turty ! " coaxed their little mistress ; and, after many
feints, one or two of the shy amphibians were persuaded to
approach near enough to snatch a wedge-shaped bite of the
tempting morsel, which was often remorselessly taken from them
by the greedy fishes.

One small turtle, no larger than the palm of the child's
hand, had lost one of his forepaws in some prehistoric age, and,
in consequence, rejoiced in the name of "Three-paw." He was
very tame, and permitted his little friend to take him from the
water and feed him, thus protecting him from assault. Another
quaint feature of the exhibition was " Old Snapper," a mud
turtle renowned alike for his morose temper and his strength of
jaw. There were about twenty turtles, of various kinds ; but
each was known by some distinguishing feature.

Mr. Sargent learned that the fishes and turtles were native

A TRUE FISH STORY. 117

to the pond, which at all times furnished the essentials for a fish
dinner, so they were not dependent upon the child's favors for
their food. They had been gradually tamed, during the two
preceding years, by the simple law of kindness ; and the child
loved her strange pets as other children love their dogs and
kittens. The fishes made their appearance each year about the
first of May, and went into winter quarters by the first of
October. They were always particular as to diet. They did
not eat meat, and rejected the sour baker's bread of that period
with prompt disgust.

Being much interested, Mr. Sargent published an account
of what he had seen in the next issue of the Transcript, with the
result that the peaceful, sylvan home of the child was invaded by
curious visitors from far and near ; and for several years their
numbers mounted into the thousands, representing many
nationalities. No fee was ever charged, but the little girl was
generously recompensed by many. However, the strain was
too great ; and her parents, not wishing to make the feeding a
public exhibition, were compelled to discontinue it, although
some of the fishes long remained the pets of their old friend.

The story was afterward published by Mr. Sargent in one of
his school readers.

Helen Whiton.

Note : Can't you guess who was the little girl ? — Editor.

THE CHIME OF BELLS.

" The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea."

BELLS and the lowing of the homeward coming cows, and the
close of the day — at Stoke and at Old Hingham ! How
much of English rural and village life is timed to the sound of
bells ! How much of our life is started and stopped by the toot
of steam whistles !

Only on the quiet mornings, as on a peaceful Sabbath in
June, or a golden morning in Indian summer, will the sweet
swinging chimes of New Hingham's Memorial Tower float over
the tree-tops to me, here in Mullein Hill, in the extreme south
of the town. For here in Great Plain I am as far away from
Bare Cove and the hill where the tower will stand as any resident
of the town can be ; but when the wind is right — and sometimes
the wind is right — I shall hear the bells — the voice of Old
Hingham beyond the sea, the voice of old days, of old customs,
old faiths, old hopes, — forever new.

In the whir of the shop wheels, and the roar of the city
streets, we could not hear the angel us. But the streets of
Hingham are quiet, and over the wide fields of this town of homes
are many a man and woman who, at sound of the evening bells,
will pause in their work to pray.

As this book goes to press a memorial tower is about to be
erected in honor of the founders of the town, and in this tower
will be hung a peal of bells, copies of ancient bells in England
that were known to the forefathers before they migrated. The

(118)

THE CHIME OF BELLS. 119

tower will stand at the entrance to the Old Burying Ground and
adjacent to the Meeting House. It will contain the ancient block
of flint sent from Old Hin^ham.

Twenty-five hundred donors have made the tower with its
peal of bells possible. Their names are to be inscribed in the
Book of Donors to be kept in the tower. Among these is the
name of the Reverend Louis C. Cornish, minister of the First
Parish in Hingham. Let it stand illuminated on the parchment,
for to Mr. Cornish, his dreams and eflforts, as well as to those
sending gifts though it be from the ends of the earth, is the town
of Hingham indebted for this memorial tower with its peal of
bells.

Dallas Lore Sharp.

THE HINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS.

IN the month of October, 1901, the Hingham Society of Arts
and Crafts was organized.

In the words of its simple constitution : " Its purpose is to
promote artistic work in all branches of handicraft. It endeavors
to stimulate an appreciation of the dignity and value of good
design and to establish a medium of exchange between the pro-
ducer and consumer."

The society has a permanent exhibition and salesroom in
the building of the Hingham Water Company, one minute's walk
from the Hingham Railroad Station. This room is open to the
public each week on Tuesday and Thursday morning and after-
noon and on Saturday afternoon.

The handicrafts of the society at present are dyeing (vege-
table) basket materials, making baskets, rugs, embroidery and
netting, spinning and weaving, doing bead work, cabinet work,
making candles from the wax of the bay berry, metal work,
toy furniture, leather work, photographs and printing, and
designing.

Baskets and rugs were the first industries attempted. As
soon as the society was organized the interest in basketry became
apparent. During the first few months about twenty women
took up the work as an industry, some becoming weavers of
reed baskets, and others of raffia and palm leaf. A great stimu-
lus to the work was found in visits to old garrets, the dim
interiors of which concealed many long hidden treasures, quaint

(120)

THE HINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS. 121

in shape and of curious workmanship, brought years ago from
foreign countries by the old sea captains of Hingham.

These afforded material for study ; and the interest in find-
ing out how they were made and in adapting the ideas suggested
to new uses was unflagging.

Many different shapes of waste baskets have been repro-
duced, and two or three new styles such as pie, picnic, and
luncheon baskets made, while the shapes and sizes of mending
and sewing baskets as well as flower trays and letter baskets are
legion.

There are also " forget-me-not " baskets with the coloring
true to nature, designed to hold a bunch of these flowers which
are as intimately connected with Hingham as the " Sabbatia " is
with Plymouth.

Then there are baskets for violets, with wicker work over
glass in the delicate violet shades.

One of the members owns an old-fashioned loom on which
the rasr ruofs are woven. The New England braided rugs of our
grandmother's day are a specialty with this society and are most
durable, and give an air of comfort and repose to a room.

In metal work forging has been successfully attempted in
brass, copper, and silver, the gorgeous color of the enameling
suggesting a butterfly's wing or a ruby-throated humming bird.

One of the chief aims of the society is to revive the old
white embroidery of our grandmothers. This it reproduces and
adapts to modern uses, keeping as closely as possible to the
spirit of the colonial needlewomen.

Cross-stitch designs have been adapted from old " samplers ; "
at the present writing great interest has been shown in a revival

122 THE HINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS.

of this work and old samplers are eagerly sought and lucky are
those who own them.

Complete outfits for bedroom furnishings are made in the
netted fringes, entire canopies for four-posted bedsteads, besides
the smaller doilies for the dining table.

Photographs of natural scenery in and around Hingham are
most artistic in composition and in distribution of light and
shade.

Bayberry dips, redolent as they are of the pastures and
"woods, have a widespread reputation.

Hingham used to be called " Bucket Town " and still is for
that matter. When the bucket industry was at its height Hing-
ham was always astir, sending most of her output to the West
Indies. But as in the case of other industries, when machines
came in use and the buckets could be made more quickly and
cheaply, handwork was driven out.

Mr. George Fearing, the sole survivor of these hand-
workers, owns several sets of these old tools which cannot now
be duplicated.

Until very recently (being now incapacitated by age and
infirmities) he has used these tools in making nests of boxes and
buckets, riggings of different sizes, and colonial toy furniture.

Hingham has always been famous for its wooden ware ; in
the old days the busy hammer of the cooper was heard in all
parts of the town.

The art will not die out, however, for in the last few years
younger men have come to the fore and are reproducing many
choice designs in the toy furniture for baby houses, modeled
from the John Carver and John Alden chairs with rush bottom
seats. Toy mirrors are an exact reproduction of the old colonial

THE HINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS. 123

mirrors and are in different sizes from one suitable for a toy
baby house to one for my lady's chamber, having appropriate
pictures at the top in color.

With this historic background, it was very natural that this
society should choose for its legend the "Hingham Bucket."
No article made by the members of the society and approved by
its committee is offered for sale without the mark of the Hin^-
ham Bucket.

The Hingham Society has affiliated itself with the National
Leaofue of Handicraft Societies.

The annual sale of several days usually takes place during
the month of July.

The society sets for itself a very high standard and compels
itself to live up to it ; its sphere of usefulness is constantly
increasing, the sales each year being in advance of the year pre-
vious, while its wares are in demand and are sent to nearly all
the leading cities in our great country.

It has been an inspiration to the formation and development
of many other societies, and is always ready to offer a helping
hand to younger societies who have " caught the spirit " but lack
experience.

William Morris once said : '' Have nothing in your house
which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
This sentence contains the whole essence of the movement in a
nutshell. With this duty recognized it will not take many
generations before a real and individual taste will be developed,
which will do away with many of the unnecessary luxuries of
our modern life and lead to more simple living and higher
thinking.

Susan B. Willard.

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