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Hingham, Massachusetts
Town
The Old Ship Church, Hingham (Seventeenth-century English Colonial architecture)
Seal
Nickname:  “Bucket Town”
Motto(s):  “History and Pride”
Location in Plymouth County in Massachusetts
Coordinates: 42°14′N 70°53′W / 42.233°N 70.883°W / 42.233; -70.883
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Plymouth
Settled	1633 (as Bare Cove)
Incorporated	September 2, 1635
Government
• Type	Open town meeting
Area
• Total	26.3 sq mi (68.1 km)
• Land	22.2 sq mi (57.5 km)
• Water	4.1 sq mi (10.6 km)
Elevation	59 ft (18 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	24,284
• Density	1,090/sq mi (422/km)
Time zone	UTC-5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (Eastern)
ZIP Code	02043
Area code	339/781
FIPS code	25-30210
GNIS feature ID	0618342
Website	Hingham, Massachusetts

Hingham ( HING-əm) is a town in northern Plymouth County in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Part of the Greater Boston region, it is located on the South Shore of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the population was 24,284. It contains the census-designated place of the same name. Hingham is known for its colonial history and location on Boston Harbor. The town was named after Hingham, Norfolk, England, and was first settled by English colonists in 1633.

The town of Hingham was dubbed “Bare Cove” by the first colonizing English in 1633, but two years later was incorporated as a town under the name “Hingham.” The land on which Hingham was settled was deeded to the English by the Wampanoag sachem Wompatuck in 1655. The town was within Suffolk County from its founding in 1643 until 1803, and Plymouth County from 1803 to the present. The eastern part of the town split off to become Cohasset in 1770. The town was named for Hingham, a market town in the English county of Norfolk, whence most of the first colonists came, including Abraham Lincoln’s ancestor Samuel Lincoln (1622–1690), his first American ancestor, who came to Massachusetts in 1637. A statue of President Lincoln adorns the area adjacent to downtown Hingham Square.

Hingham was born of religious dissent. Many of the original founders were forced to flee their native town in Norfolk with both their vicars, Rev. Peter Hobart and Rev. Robert Peck, when they fell afoul of the strict doctrines of the Church of England. Peck was known for what the eminent Norfolk historian Rev. Francis Blomefield called his “violent schismatical spirit”. Peck lowered the chancel railing of the church, in accord with Puritan sentiment that the Anglican church of the day was too removed from its parishioners. He also antagonized ecclesiastical authorities with other forbidden practices.

Hobart, born in Hingham, Norfolk, in 1604 and, like Peck, a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, sought shelter from the prevailing discipline of the high church among his fellow Puritans. The cost to those who emigrated was steep. They “sold their possessions for half their value,” noted a contemporary account, “and named the place of their settlement after their natal town.” (The cost to the place they left behind was also high: Hingham was forced to petition Parliament for aid, claiming that the departure of its most well-to-do citizens had left it hamstrung.)

While most of the early Hingham settlers came from Hingham and other nearby villages in East Anglia, a few Hingham settlers like Anthony Eames came from the West Country of England. The early settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts, for instance, had come under the guidance of Rev. John White of Dorchester in Dorset, and some of them (like Eames) later moved to Hingham. Accounts from Hingham’s earliest years indicate some friction between the disparate groups, culminating in a 1645 episode involving the town’s “trainband”, when some Hingham settlers supported Eames, and others supported Bozoan Allen, a prominent early Hingham settler and Hobart ally who came from King’s Lynn in Norfolk. Prominent East Anglian Puritans like the Hobarts and the Cushings, for instance, were used to holding sway in matters of governance. Eventually the controversy became so heated that John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley were drawn into the fray; minister Hobart threatened to excommunicate Eames.

The bitter trainband controversy dragged on for several years, culminating in stiff fines. Eventually a weary Eames, who was in his mid-fifties when the controversy began and who had served Hingham as first militia captain, a selectman, and Deputy in the General Court, threw in the towel and moved to nearby Marshfield where he again served as Deputy and emerged as a leading citizen, despite his brush with the Hingham powers-that-be.

Although the town was incorporated in 1635, the colonists did not get around to negotiating purchase from the Wampanoag, the Native American tribe in the region, until three decades later. On July 4, 1665, the tribe’s chief sachem, Josiah Wompatuck, sold the township to Capt. Joshua Hobart (brother of Rev. Peter Hobart) and Ensign John Thaxter (father of Col. Samuel Thaxter), representatives of Hingham’s colonial residents. Having occupied the land for 30 years, the Englishmen presumably felt entitled to a steep discount.
The sum promised Josiah Wompatuck for the land encompassing Hingham was to be paid by two Hingham landowners: Lieut. John Smith and Deacon John Leavitt, who had been granted 12 acres (49,000 m) on Hingham’s Turkey Hill earlier that year. Now the two men were instructed to deliver payment for their 12-acre (49,000 m) grant to Josiah the chief Sachem. The grant to Smith and Leavitt — who together bought other large tracts from the Native Americans for themselves and their partners—was “on condition that they satisfy all the charge about the purchase of the town’s land of Josiah—Indian sagamore, both the principal purchase and all the other charge that hath been about it”. With that payment the matter was considered settled.

The third town clerk of Hingham was Daniel Cushing, who emigrated to Hingham from Hingham, Norfolk, with his father Matthew in 1638. Cushing’s meticulous records of early Hingham enabled subsequent town historians to reconstruct much of early Hingham history as well as that of the early families. Cushing was rather unusual in that he included the town’s gossip along with the more conventional formal record-keeping.

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According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 26.3 square miles (68.1 km), of which 22.2 square miles (57.5 km) is land and 4.1 square miles (10.6 km), or 15.58%, is water. Hingham is bordered on the east by Cohasset, and Scituate, on the south by Norwell and Rockland, on the west by Weymouth, and on the north by Hingham Bay and Hull. Cohasset and Weymouth are in Norfolk County; the other towns, like Hingham itself, are in Plymouth County. Hingham is 14 miles (23 km) southeast of Boston.

Hingham lies along the southwestern corner of Boston Harbor. The bay leads to a harbor, which cuts a U-shaped indentation into the northern shore of the town. The town is separated from Hull by the Weir River and its tributary, which leads to the Straits Pond. The northern third of the town’s border with Weymouth consists of the Weymouth Back River, which empties out into Hingham Bay. There are several other small ponds and brooks throughout town. The town also has several forests and parks, the largest of which, Wompatuck State Park, spreads into the neighboring towns of Cohasset, Scituate and Norwell. There are also several conservation areas throughout town; the portion of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area in Hingham includes Bumpkin Island, Button Island, Langlee Island, Ragged Island, Sarah Island and the World’s End Reservation, which juts out into the bay. There is a marina along the mouth of the Weymouth Back River, and a public beach along the harbor.