Old Ship Church

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Old Ship Church

(Old Ship Meetinghouse)
Hingham, Massachusetts
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
Old Ship Church
Old Ship Church
Location: Main Street

Hingham, Massachusetts
Built/Founded: 1681
Added to NRHP: November 15, 1966
NRHP Reference#: 6600077 [1]
Governing body: Private

The Old Ship Church (also known as the Old Ship Meetinghouse) was built in 1681 in Hingham, Massachusetts in the United States. It is the oldest church in continuous ecclesiastical use in the United States. It is the only remaining 17th century Puritan meetinghouse in America. On October 9, 1960, it was designated a National Historic Landmark and on November 15, 1966, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[2][3]

Old Ship Church is, according to The New York Times, "the oldest continuously worshiped-in church in North America and the only surviving example in this country of the English Gothic style of the 17th century. The more familiar delicately spired white Colonial churches of New England would not be built for more than half a century." Within the church, "the ceiling, made of great oak beams, looks like the inverted frame of a ship," notes The Washington Post. "Built in 1681, it is the oldest church in continuous use as a house of worship in North America."[4]

Contents

[edit] History

The first minister of Old Ship was the Rev. Peter Hobart, who had attended the heavily Puritan Cambridge University.[5] Natives of Hingham in Norfolk County, East Anglia, Peter Hobart, his father Edmund and his brother Lieut. Joshua Hobart were among Hingham's most prominent early settlers. Edmund Hobart and his wife Margaret (Dewey), said Cotton Mather, "were eminent for piety and feared God above many."[6] Old Ship Church deacon John Leavitt, whose son John married Rev. Hobart's daughter Bathsheba, was deacon when Old Ship was constructed and he argued forcefully for the construction of a new meetinghouse.[7]

The program celebrating the 275th anniversary of the raising of the Old Ship Church in July 1956 described the raising of the meetinghouse: "It was a hot day, the 26th of July 1691, when the townspeople gathered on the wooden knoll bordering on Bachelor's Row (now Main Street), Hingham, Mass, to take part in what the Selectmen's record described as the 'raising of the frame of the new Meeting House.' It was a community undertaking and every freeman in the town had been assessed for the cost of the structure according to his worth, in amounts ranging from one pound to fifteen pounds. There were all there, regardless of the heat, including Deacon John Leavitt, well over seventy years old, who had led the successful fight to have the new Meeting House erected approximately on the site of the old."[8]

[edit] Current use

The current minister is Kenneth Read-Brown, a descendant of Rev. Peter Hobart. The congregation is Unitarian Universalist and is a proud Welcoming Congregation.

General Benjamin Lincoln House, Hingham, whose ancestors are interred in the Old Ship Burying Ground
General Benjamin Lincoln House, Hingham, whose ancestors are interred in the Old Ship Burying Ground

[edit] Old Ship Burying Ground

Old Ship Church is surrounded by a large colonial graveyard amidst gently undulating hills. The graveyard is sometimes called the First Settlers cemetery. It was originally part of a six-acre tract of land granted by the town to Thomas Gill, one of Hingham's earliest settlers. (It now comprises 16 acres, and is the largest and oldest cemetery in Hingham.)[9] Buried within its precincts are many of Hingham's earliest settlers and their descendants, including members of the Cushing, Hersey, Otis, Chaffee, Lane, Andrews, Hobart, Loring, Bates, Leavitt, Thaxter, Tower, Beal, Lincoln and other prominent early families.[10][11]

Among the prominent individuals buried in the graveyard are: Thomas Joy (1638-1678), builder of the first statehouse in Boston (the building was built of timber); Rev. Peter Hobart (1604-1679), pastor of Old Ship Church, ancestor of Senator John Kerry; Edmund Hobart, father of Rev. Peter, instrumental in founding Hingham, ancestor of John Henry Hobart; William Hersey, one of Hingham's first settlers, ancestor of writer John Hersey; Col. Samuel Thaxter (1665-1740), one of "His Majesty's Council and Col. of His Regiment," delegate to the General Court and Hingham selectman; Col. Benjamin Lincoln (1699-1771), member of "His Majesty's Council," town selectman, town clerk and father of Major General Benjamin Lincoln; Mrs. Sarah Langley Hersey Derby (1714-1790), founder of Derby Academy in Hingham, widow of Dr. Ezekiel Hersey and of Salem merchant Elias Hasket Derby; Mary Revere Lincoln (1770-1853), daughter of Paul Revere; Governor John Albion Andrew (1818-1867), Civil War governor of Massachusetts, instrumental in founding the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments, the first regiments of black infantry in the Civil War; Wilmon Brewer (1895-1998), philanthropist, poet, donated Old Ordinary tavern to the town of Hingham, along with the More-Brewer Conservation Area.

The oldest burials date from at least 1672, before the building of the current meeting house. The Settlers' Monument in Old Ship burying ground marks the place where the remains of Hingham's earliest settlers were moved after their initial burying place along modern-day Main Street, in front of Old Ship Church, was excavated for the passage of horse-drawn trolleys about 1835.

[edit] References

  1. ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
  2. ^ Old Ship Church, National Park Service.
  3. ^ The Perfect New England Village, Fox Butterfield, The New York Times, May 14, 1989.
  4. ^ Hingham, Classic New England: Five for the Road, Lawrence Lindner, The Washington Post, April 22, 2007
  5. ^ A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New England, John Farmer, 1829
  6. ^ Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England, Cotton Mather, Hartford, 1853
  7. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Published by the Town, 1893.
  8. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Edward Tracy Bouve, John Davis Long, Fearing Burr, Charles Winfield Scott Seymour, Walter Lincoln Bouve, Francis Henry Lincoln, George Lincoln, Edmund Hersey, Published by the Town, 1893
  9. ^ Hingham Cemetery Facts, compiled by Lucinda Day, Director, PDF file
  10. ^ Towns of New England and Old England, Ireland and Scotland, Allan Forbes, 1920
  11. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Edward Tracy Bouve, John Davis Long, Fearing Burr, Published by the Town, 1893

[edit] External links

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