USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Hingham > The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, September 15, 1885 > Part 4
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
convictions, nor lost that respectful deference for the opinions of others which is essential to the smooth working of free institutions.
Something of the general average of prosperity which has attended the growth of the town is to be attributed to natural causes. Neither its situation nor its resources have been such as to develop a single industry to the exclusion of others. No broad river turns the wheels of great factories; its soil favors no special crop, nor can it compete with the rich prairies of the West; but all its modest advantages have been turned to good ac- count. Its citizens have been to a large extent landholders, and the town has enjoyed the stability which attends such an ownership. Farms of liberal extent have returned a competence to the farmer. Agriculture and horticulture have especially pros- pered, and both, under the vigorous impulse given by the Hingham Society, have of late secured for the town more than a local name. A wide variety of manufactures has from time to time occupied its citizens. The sea, as well as the land, has yielded its large returns. Thus has resulted a compara- tively equal distribution of property, and permanent security from commercial disaster. Such influences confirm likewise the homogeneous character of its people. No wide differences of social position have impaired its harmony or its unanimity. By reason of its geographical position, it has suffered little of the loss which remote towns experience, from
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which their numbers and best life are drained by the superior attractions of cities. No doubt this town has not altogether escaped this influence nor its certain effect; but whatever it has thus lost has been compensated by ready access to the larger markets and broader opportunities of a large city, and its citizens who have been drawn thither have not escaped the influence of carly attachments, nor have proved unwilling to share with their native town some portion of the fruits of their success.
Although the first settlers were not especially well educated, yet there were among them men of more than ordinary acquirements. The value of education was at once recognized, and a standard above the average has always been upheld. To this both public and private liberality and effort early contributed, and have continued their sup- port. Not merely were common schools at once established, but Greek and Latin have been taught in Hingham from a date earlier than that of King Philip's war. Whatever may be the modern question of the utility of these studies, at least they appear to have done the town no harm. And it is now more than one hundred years since Madam Derby estab- lished Derby School, now Derby Academy, as practi- cally a free academy, where the higher branches of learning could be taught. The result of all these provisions was carly to develop and maintain a society not merely recognized as well educated, but one of considerable refinement.
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250TII ANNIVERSARY.
The school-houses of the present day, with the means of education which they supply, mark an incalculable advance upon the opportunities of our fathers. It is not certain that sound education has made equal strides. New England knows well the value of common schools, and there is no danger that they will lack support. The danger lies in placing too high a value upon imposing buildings and multiplied studies. The highest object of these schools is education, - that is to say, mental train- ing, -not the acquisition of information alone. Of mere information, no doubt our schools supply more than our fathers could command. They were our inferiors in accurate learning. That they were such in mental vigor -the test of a sound education - I should not dare affirm.
One other secret of permanent influence and strength, and of a sound public spirit, has always been recognized. The town has listened to the counsels of its best citizens, has employed them in its service, and has conferred its honors upon them. They, on the other hand, have devoted their best efforts to her interests. This was conspicuously true of its early history. In those days no doubt educa- tion was the possession of fewer men, and made them inevitably leaders. Nevertheless, it was no more true in the days of Peter Hobart than it is to- day, that those names which the memory most readily preserves as leaders in the town were those fittest to lead, and those who have made its name familiar
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abroad have first become conspicuous at home. We hear much in these days about the failure of the best citizens to take part in public affairs. Com- plaint is made that they are critics of, not actors in public life. The greater fault is with the people themselves who refuse to call such to their service. Men of worth are men of self-respect. The people must itself select its leaders. Those are not fit to lead who select themselves. The public service is the highest service. The government of men is the most difficult work set for men to do. No ability is too great for it; no experience too wide. This ability and experience are not acquired in the suc- cessful machinations of a caucus. Public office is not best filled by men who resort to it for a livelihood which they cannot earn in competition with their fellows.
Besides these characteristics, there attaches to the old town an indescribable quaintness, result- ing in part directly from its antiquity, but coming also from the peculiar individuality of its people. It is not, after all, in fresh and new communities that human nature finds its freest scope and results in its greatest diversity. It is in the old towns that you find most individuality, - perhaps most strength of character. Native soil supplies most vigor.
This is indeed a day to celebrate the past, to magnify the deeds and sacrifices of the fathers by exhibiting the fruits they have borne. But no day
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is a day for self-complacency. We justify our satis- faction with the present only by reason of the credit it reflects on them. Such an inheritance brings proportionate responsibilities. Nothing valuable was ever won without effort or retained without vigilance. The past has been great, but the present does not sink below it. The standard of private morality has not been lowered. If religious duties appeared then to absorb more of life, yet what we are taught is true religion finds better expression in the widespread charity of to-day. No more learned divines nor those of saintlier life walked before the people in those earlier years than have led this gen- eration by their high example. This town has furnished no more influential magistrates, no more faithful public servants, no more public-spirited citizens than in the recent years. Fresh from the memories of the Civil War, shall we say patriotism fails? Do not the countless thousands who followed the great general of that struggle to his grave testify that popular gratitude is still warm? It is a day of great deeds and great opportunities. The political progress of the world is developing states, of which the extent and power surpass their predecessors, and are only paralleled by the empire acquired by men over the natural forces of the world, - these again to be left far behind in the growth of the century to come. We pass our hour in looking backward, in celebrating the virtues of our fathers and proposing them for our examples. Let us not miss the highest
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lesson they teach. Their glance was always for- ward. They were not occupied with the glories of their past, but with the duties of the present, and the hopes of the future. They cast aside their por- tion of material prosperity upon which we congratu- late ourselves to-day, and trusted the promise of the centuries to come. Richer than they by the wealth of their example, let us remember that the only con- ditions of life are change and progress. Let this old town, then, not content with what the fathers have done, but instructed by them, not merely pre- serve what is valuable in its inheritance, but welcome and encourage whatever promises to improve it. So shall it maintain its honorable fame, and future cen- tennials present to its children a continued record of prosperity.
The Oration was followed by the singing of " America" by the congregation, with inspiring effect. The exercises closed with a Benediction by Rev. HENRY M. DEAN, minister of the First Baptist Society.
BENEDICTION OF REV. HENRY M. DEAN.
Trou God of the spirits of all flesh, thou Crea- tor and Preserver of all generations of men, as on the fathers, so upon the sons, and in yet richer measure, may mercy, grace, and peace from thee abide, through Christ. Amen.
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25OTII ANNIVERSARY.
ON the arrival of the procession at the meeting- house and during the time of the exercises there, the school-children, about seven hundred in number, were provided with a collation at Loring Hall, after which they were dismissed.
The presence of the children was one of the most interesting and beautiful features of the celebration. From the beginning it had been repeatedly urged upon the Committee of Arrangements that the day should be made memorable to the young, and every effort was made to accomplish this result. Convey- ances were provided for the more distant schools. The children turned out with full ranks. Each scholar was provided with a badge of red ribbon with a gilt heading and pin, upon which was in- scribed, "250th Anniversary of the Settlement of Hingham: School." The teachers and scholars had provided themselves with tasteful banners indicating their respective schools. No person who observed the bright eyes and smiling faces of the children, portraying their lively interest in the occasion, will ever forget the picture.
While the exercises in the meeting-house and the children's collation were in progress, Reeves's Amer- ican Band gave a concert in Fountain Square, which was listened to by a large concourse of people.
Upon the close of the exercises in the meeting- house, the bells on all the churches were rung for an hour, and a national salute of thirty-cight guns was fired from " Powder-house " hill.
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The procession was reformed and moved through Main and Leavitt Streets to Agricultural Hall, the place appointed for the dinner. Here the pro- cession was dismissed.
After the guests and those holding dinner-tickets had entered the hall, the Cadets marched to their headquarters, which had been established for the day at the corner of Main and Water Streets, in the rear of the house occupied by Charles C. Melcher, quartermaster of the corps. They dined in a tent pitched for the purpose. Later in the day they returned to Agricultural Hall, and escorted the Governor to the special train which conveyed them. to Boston.
The presence of the Cadets added very much to the brilliancy of the occasion, and enabled the Com- mittee of Arrangements to furnish suitable escort to their chief guest, the Governor of the Common- wealth. It gave general satisfaction that the military organization which has become ours by adoption, because of their annual encampment in Hingham, took part in this celebration.
The Grand Army Post which escorted the proces- sion dined in a tent near the residence of Col. Hawkes Fearing, at Hingham Centre; and the Fire Department dined at Niagara Hall.
THE DINNER.
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FOUR hundred and eighty-seven persons were seated at dinner. At the table upon the plat- form sat Hon. JOHN D. LONG, the President of the Day. On his right were Governor Robinson, Brig. Gen. Samuel Dalton, Col. Ephraim Stearns, Col. Edward H. Gilbert, Hon. Henry B. Peirce, Hon. Jonathan Bourne, Mr. Luther Stephenson, and Mr. DeWitt C. Bates, Chairman of the Selectmen of Hingham. On his left were Lieut. Governor Ames, Mr. Solomon Lincoln, Hon. Thomas Russell, Hon. John F. Andrew, Dr. William Everett, Rev. Edward A. Horton, Rev. H. Price Collier, Rev. Henry A. Miles, D. D., and Mr. J. Q. A. Lothrop, Chairman of the Selectmen of Cohasset.
Divine blessing was invoked by Rev. Dr. MILES, as follows : -
Gon of our fathers and God of their children from one generation to another, humbly and rever- ently we invoke thy blessing on the feast before us. May it be a feast of gratitude for the past, of inspir- ing hope for the future, and of a thoughtful and firm purpose to make the future better than the past, to the glory of thy holy name. Amen.
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After dinner Reeves's Band played the overture to " Zampa." Addresses by the President and others followed. The speakers roused the audience to a high pitch of enthusiasm; the President es- pecially, by his many humorous allusions, excited frequent laughter and applause, his hearers being quick to appreciate his points.
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN D. LONG, PRESIDENT.
THE only word which a presiding officer should utter on an occasion like this is the word of welcome. Having made which profound and original sugges- tion, the presiding officer on this occasion will proceed to occupy the rest of the afternoon.
The old town of Hingham, rich in historic interest as well as with distinguished names, - of which fact you are pretty well aware by this time, - now cele- brates her two hundred and fiftieth birthday, and extends a hearty greeting to all her children. She has summoned those who dwell at home and those who dwell abroad. She has invited her nearest and her remotest kin. She has entreated the stranger within her gates. Side by side with her veterans she has arrayed her school-children, whose songs rang on the morning air, and whose faces certainly were the fairer sunshine of the morning scene. She has recalled also the spirits of all those who have gone before; and Hobart the preacher, and Thaxter the soldier have led their invisible but
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
sympathetic followers in the procession which has this day animated your streets. You marched past the house where Major-General Ben. Lincoln of Revolutionary fame was born and in which he lived and died, and the old warrior, clad in Continental costume, waved you an inaudible cheer with the sword of Cornwallis. You passed the site of the tavern where Lafayette tarried, and the gallant Frenchman politely saluted you. You passed the humble stoop on which Andrew stood on the night of his first nomination for Governor, and responded to the congratulations of his townsmen who never forget him. You passed the old Derby Academy, founded in the preceding century, and typical of the New England consecration to education. You passed the ancient Meeting-house, still as loyal to the Puritan essentials as its frame, for more than two centuries, to the Puritan architecture. You passed the old burying-ground where the forefathers -not " the rude forefathers" - of the hamlet sleep, and where for two hundred and fifty years the gen- erations of the town have lain down to honored rest. I regret to say that with sacrilegious step invading their quiet slumber, somebody has recently and con- temptuously suggested in the columns of our village paper that the early settlers of Hingham either were in the exercises of this day, or had arranged and inspired them. It was a wicked and perverse citizen, angry because not he but a modest and meritorious townsman was made President of the Day. But the
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sneer was an unconscious praise; and blessed be the old town of Hingham that so much of what was sterling in her past is preserved in the character and make-up of to-day, and that, if there was ever anything narrow or stinted, in the place of it have come the broad citizenship, the equal rights, the ex- panded personal freedom, the better living, and the larger circumstance of the present time.
The things, of course, which conspicuously mark the history of a town are the characteristics and acts of certain individuals. Round these cluster the romance and the interest. They are the blazed monarchs of the forest by which the traveller finds his way. And yet I think, and I think the histo- rian of the morning will agree with me, that the true history of a town for two hundred and fifty years is in its unindividualized growth, as steady and irre- sistible as the movement of a glacier, - the whole abundant forest, not a few trees in it, but the whole abundant forest with its mighty growing shelter and its common glory, - in other words, the entity of civilization, with its bettering of human conditions for all alike. If you would trace the real history of Hingham, you will not, proud as you may be of them, limit your view to the names of Lincoln and An- drew, which quickest catch the eye and elicit the praise of the outsider who, in kindly courtesy, pays us the graceful compliment of an after-dinner speech. You will find it, as you citizens of Hingham know, in the benefactions of Sarah Langley, who founded
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
the Academy ; of Martin Wilder and Ben. Loring, who dedicated halls to the people's use; of Albert Fearing, whose picture is above me, and to whom we owe this Agricultural Hall, these Agricultural Grounds, and the Public Library, itself a very foun- tain of beneficence; of Dr. Fiske, who, robbing the grim king of his terrors, woke the dreary desert of the dead into a garden of beauty and of grateful rest; of George P. Hayward, to whom we are in- debted for the start of the best material gift this town ever had, -- an abundant and universal supply of pure water ; of men of the type of David Whiton, to whom, now in his broken health, we send the message of our sympathy, and who, out of his large heart, gave from his store while he had it to the enterprise and to the welfare of his native town ; of the young man who plants your waysides with the foliage that shall lift its grateful shade over the heads of your children's children ; of that other who for half a generation has impressed the coming man and woman with the instruction of your highest public education ; of those, many and many among us, who by their industrious toil and faithful citizen- ship have kept sweet the heart of New England civilization, and who, though no Emerson dwelt among them, have lived his philosophy in the se- renity of their hearthsides, and written it in the æsthetic adornment of their homes; of the devoted clergymen and teachers, the good women, the hum- ble apostles of social reform and charity, the pro-
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gressive citizens of foreign birth, the men of wealth, who, with a public spirit worthy of all praise, have year after year contributed to enlarge and to freshen every stream of good influence. Such be the bene- factors of your town, the fibre of your history, whom no orator engraves, whom no poet sings.
So it is, ladies and gentlemen, that we point you -to-day better than the past, to-morrow better than to-day -to better schools, to certainly a more en- franchised church, to a larger enjoyment of life, to a more widely diffused sharing of the good things of the world, than our fathers had; yet we do not for- get that they are ours in this larger degree because of their evolution out of the fathers' prayers and tears and faith and toil and sacrifice. So it is that if this is a day of gratitude, as it is, it is still more a day of hope; if it is a day of reverence, as it is, it is still more a day of pride; if it is a day of laurels, as it is, it is still more a day of the spur ; and, above all, it is a glad, joyous day of welcome. It is a day merry with the ringing of bells and loud with the . roar of cannon, although we are a little disappointed in that respect, the pieces not making the thunder we hoped for when we secured them. It is a day melodious with strains of music, and with the sweeter strain of the orator's voice; a day happy with the songs and merriment of children and the memories of age, through whose very tears the rainbow arches. Over all its sweep, over the hills and the woods and on the bay, along every street
250TII ANNIVERSARY.
and over every home, Hingham writes her bounteous welcome.
Let us therefore, in the spirit of such a day, speak the things that come crowding to our lips. In the old Scripture phrase, let us open our hearts and sing praises. For this purpose -for I do not forget, now that I have had the opportunity to lift my own voice, that I am only a chorister whose duty it is not to sing but to keep time - I have engaged a very select choir. Each member of it is a soloist, and you are expected to furnish the accompaniment in your responsive faces and hands. Their songs are of a remarkable range, and yet not one of them will strike a base note, or a flat, or, on this occasion I trust, a sharp one. They will afflict your ears with no Italian airs, but give you plain New Eng- land psalmody. Yet, as you listen, it will wake in your hearts the tenderest melodies that ever touched them to tears, -answering chords of home and patriotism, of the field and the farm, of the blue sea and the school-days, of the village church and the dear old Hingham life, inwrought into which is the pride of our citizenship, indeed, but a thousand times deeper and tenderer, the unspeakable riches of the love, the longing, the sorrows, and the memories of our hearts and homes.
A lady from foreign parts visiting us now, or some century ago, expressed her surprise that a New England dinner could be had, and toasts given and responded to, without wine. We will
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show her to-day how the thing is done. A gentle- man, distinguished in this community for his interest in antiquities, has sent me this little mite of a bottle. It contains an acorn ; and the interesting thing about it is that that acorn was on the table fifty years ago this day, at the bi-centennial celebration at that time. It illustrates two things: first, how great oaks do not always from little acorns grow ; and second, how the great bottles of fifty years ago have diminished, until they are now hardly visible to the naked eye.
The first toast is, The Commonwealth of Mas- sachusetts, -a little larger edition of the town of Hingham.
As a general thing, we do not care much about having Governors on our festival days. I suppose there are towns in the Commonwealth where they are a novelty ; but with us in our home market they have got to be somewhat a drug. Of late years I doubt if you could have induced any of our very best citizens to accept the honor of the office. But just now we have such a good Governor, one who so thoroughly commands the respect and the con- fidence of the whole Commonwealth, that [applause] - you cannot wait until I finish my sentence before you overwhelm him with applause -that we wel- come him here with all our hearts. Governor Robinson, won't you strike the keynote for us?
Governor Robinson was received with cheers and music by the band, after which he spoke as follows : --
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR ROBINSON.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN, - The keynote has been so well set by your honored fellow- citizen that I mistrust you really want him to con- tinue through the whole performance. Indeed, this volume that is to be presented this afternoon, so far as I may have any part in it, will be chiefly index and preface. You have it all now before you, It has been well done, ladies and gentlemen. And the gauge of Massachusetts has been set, in the judgment of the President, at least, - a smaller edi- tion of the town of Hingham. He said larger, but he really didn't mean it. Why, it has really become the sure impression of the people all over the Com- monwealth, if I may be allowed to state it, that somehow or other, if we should make the search, we should find Massachusetts tucked away in some little corner of this town. Why should n't we ? Looking down over the roll of the many years, and finding here and there a name of a man that has stood out before the nation and the world in great power and loyalty and courage and strength, we stop and take breath and say, "Is not that of Massachusetts?" Is it of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln of Revolutionary fame, of wisdom enough to sit in the councils of the great Washington, successful and popular enough to be collector of the port of Bos- ton, able to cut any knot that may have existed then
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in the executive mind, and relieve a great many other people of uncertainty whether they would not be called to that place ? The other Lincolns, away down to the present hour? All the Hobarts and the Cushings and all the other families? It would take me all the afternoon to mention them here.
In the time that some of us younger people can recollect, the great man who sat in the Executive Chair, commanded the attention of the country, the confidence of the people, put the State into the front, carried the soldier forward with his enthusiasm and welcomed him home with his sweetest blessing ; he whose bones slumber now in your soil, -remem- bering him, should we not stop to think that Mas- sachusetts is in Hingham? And if the President were not here now, it would be proper to say that even later than 1865 the confidence and the heart of Massachusetts have resided here in her Execu- tive. It is true indeed that the Commonwealth is but another edition of her towns.
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