The Puritans themselves grew away from many of their excessive severities. But as they gained bodily strength from their conflict with the elements, so they gained a certain moral stamina by their self-imposed religious observance. And this moral stamina has marked New England ever since, and marked her to her glory.
One cannot speak of Hingham churches—indeed, one cannot speak of Hingham—without admiring mention of the New North Church. This building, of exquisite proportions and finish, within and without, built by Bulfinch in 1806, is one of the most flawless examples of its type on the South Shore. You will appreciate the cream-colored paint, the buff walls, the quaint box pews of oiled wood, with handrails gleaming from the touch of many generations, with wooden buttons and protruding hinges proclaiming an ancient fashion; but the unique feature of the New North Church is its slave galleries. These two small galleries, between the roof and the choir loft, held for thirty years, in diminishing numbers, negroes and Indians. The last occupant was a black Lucretia, who, after being freed, was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress, which she did, and which she continued to do until her death, not so very long ago.
Hingham, its Main Street—alas for the original name of "Bachelors Rowe"—arched by a double row of superb elms on either side, is incalculably rich in old houses, old traditions, old families. Even motoring through, too quickly as motorists must, one cannot help being struck by the substantial dignity of the place, by the well-kept prosperity of the houses, large and small, which fringe the fine old highway. Ever since the days when the three Misses Barker kept loyal to George IV, claiming the King as their liege lord fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, the town has preserved a Cranford-like charm. And why not, when the very house is still handsomely preserved, where the nameless nobleman, Francis Le Baron, was concealed between the floors, and, as we are told in Mrs. Austen's novel, very properly capped the climax by marrying his brave little protector, Molly Wilder? Why not, when the Lincoln family, ancestors of Abraham, has been identified with the town since its settlement? The house of Major-General Benjamin Lincoln, who received the sword of Cornwallis at Yorktown, is still occupied by his descendants, its neat fence, many windows, two chimneys, and its two stories and a half proclaiming it a dwelling of repute. Near by, descendants of Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor of Abraham, occupy part of another roomy ancient homestead. The Wampatuck Club, named after the Indian chief who granted the original deeds of the town, has found quarters in an extremely interesting house dating from 1680. In the spacious living-room are seventeen panels, on the walls and in the doors, painted with charming old-fashioned skill by John Hazlitt, the brother of the English essayist. The Reverend Daniel Shute house, built in 1746, is practically intact with its paneled rooms and wall-paper a hundred years old. Hingham's famous elms shade the house where Parson Ebenezer Gay lived out his long pastorate of sixty-nine years and nine months, and the Garrison house, built before 1640, sheltered, in its prime, nine generations of the same family. The Rainbow Roof house, so called from the delicious curve in its roof, is one of Hingham's prettiest two-hundred-year-old cottages, and Miss Susan B. Willard's cottage is one of the oldest in the United States. Derby Academy, founded almost two centuries and a half ago by Madam Derby, still maintains its social and scholarly prestige through all the educational turmoil of the twentieth century. One likes to associate Hingham with Massachusetts's stanch and sturdy "war governor," for it was here that John Albion Andrew, who proved himself so truly one of our great men during the Civil War, courted Eliza Jones Hersey, and here that the happy years of their early married life were spent. Later, another governor, John D. Long, was for many years a mighty figure in the town.
With its ancient churches and institutions, its pensive graveyards and lovely elms, its ancestral houses and hidden gardens, Hingham typifies what is quaintest and best in New England towns. Possibly the dappling of the elms, possibly the shadow of the Old Ship Church, is a bit deeper here than in the other South Shore towns. However it may seem to its inhabitants, to the stranger everything in Hingham is tinctured by the remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism. Even the number of historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days, for when did religion and warfare not go hand in hand? During the trouble with King Philip the town had three forts, one at Fort Hill, one at the Cemetery, and one "on the plain about a mile from the harbor"; and the sites may still be identified.
Not that Hingham history is exclusively religious or martial. Her little harbor once held seventy sail of fishing vessels, and between 1815 and 1826, 165,000 barrels of mackerel were landed on their salty decks. For fifty years (between 1811 and 1860) the Rapid sailed as a packet between this town and Boston, making the trip on one memorable occasion in sixty-seven minutes. We read that in the War of 1812 she was carried up the Weymouth River and covered, masts and hull, with green bushes so that the marauding British cruisers might not find her, and as we read we find ourselves remembering that camouflage is new only in name.
How entirely fitting it seems that a town of such venerable houses and venerable legends should be presided over by a church which is the oldest of its kind in the country!
Hingham changes. There is a Roman Catholic Church in the very heart of that one-time Puritan stronghold: the New North is Unitarian, and Episcopalians, Baptists, and Second Adventists have settled down comfortably where once they would have been run out of town. Poor old Puritans, how grieved and scandalized they would be to stand, as we are standing now, and watch the procession of passing automobilists! Would it seem all lost to them, we wonder, the religious ideal for which they struggled, or would they realize that their sowing had brought forth richer fruit than they could guess? It has all changed, since Puritan days, and yet, perhaps, in no other place in New England does the hand of the past lie so visibly upon the community. You cannot lift your eyes but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago; the shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very hand of the past. Even your voice repeats the words which those old patriarchs, well versed in Biblical lore, chose for their neighborhood names. Accord Pond and Glad Tidings Plain might have been lifted from some Pilgrim's Progress, while the near-by Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem Road are from the Good Book itself.
"Which way to Egypt?" Is this an echo from that time when the Bible was the corner-stone of Church and State, of home and school?
"What's the best road to Jericho Beach?" Surely it is some grave-faced shade who calls: or is it a peal from the chimes in the Memorial Bell Tower—chimes reminiscent of old Hingham, in England? No, it is only the shouted question of the motorist, gay and prosperous, flying on his Sunday holiday through ancient Hingham town.
