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 6
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THE TOWN OF HINGHAM.
A considerable part of the county was once bought by Standish and his associates for a few tools and a few yards of cloth. Considering the character of most of it, the bargain was not very sharp. To-day that tract of land sustains in comfort more than forty thousand inhabitants. Thrift and industry dwell among them. Intelligent labor has done it all, and the fruits of labor are gladly given to promote in- telligence. This shall be my last boast for Plymouth county. She believes in education. When Horace Mann was wearied with opposition or indifference elsewhere, his hands were held up by friends in Hingham, Hanover, and Scituate, in Plymouth, and in the Bridgewaters.
Of the product of our schools, take one profession as a sample, and only a few names there. In law our county claims as her own the brilliant abilities of Tristam Burgess, and the solid merits of Chief Justice Swift, one of the most learned jurists of his day. Washington and Adams found in Scituate one worthy to be a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; and the Suffolk Bar, looking to its acknowledged head, venerable but ever young, recog- nizes a son of Plymouth who is fit to preside over any legal tribunal in the world.
Yet our boast is not so much the eminence of the few as the intelligence of the many. And whatever else is taught in Plymouth county, her schools and her history teach lessons of loyalty to country, to humanity, and to right. While her people are mind-
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ful of these, the God of the fathers will be with their children.
The PRESIDENT. - Our next toast is, - The Ora- tor of the Day, a chip of the old block.
Now that we have done our duty to the State and to the county, I think we owe something to the Orator who has spoken for the town which once embraced both Hingham and Cohasset. It is with special pleasure that I present him to you. You have passed your verdict upon his oration, and found him guilty of making a very good one. In impos- ing sentence upon him, I shall command him to throw off his oratorical armor and the weight of the honors which, to the pride of his townsmen, he has earned in the profession of the law, and to tell us in a free and easy way how he likes coming back to Hingham and meeting his old friends. Among them I reckon myself, who, during his three years at Harvard College, sat next him at the recitations of the class of '57, of which he was easily the first scholar. If I may be allowed a reminiscence, I remember the very concluding words of the oration which he delivered at one of the junior or senior exhibitions, when, speaking of the Puritan, he closed by saying, " The Puritan was intolerant, but he was not inconsistent." And there was an excellent story he used to tell, - but I will not tell it, it may be the only one he has. I present you the Orator of the Day, Mr. Solomon Lincoln.
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ADDRESS OF MR. SOLOMON LINCOLN.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN :
I should be unwilling that you should hear much more from me to-day, but I desire to take the oppor- tunity that is now given me first to thank you for the compliment which you paid me in asking me to take the part that I did in the exercises of this morn- ing. I assure you I felt it a great honor, and it was also a great pleasure to me. The truth is, that those who go away from Hingham gain one advantage over those who remain here, and that is, the pleasure that we have in coming back to you. I have not gone away so far as to lose this pleasure entirely, but I assure you it is always a real one, -always a satisfaction to walk about these well-known streets, not so much to observe the evidences of improve- ment as to revive familiar memories and to see the old rocks and trees, and the fields that I used to run about in when a boy, - which will never be like other fields to me.
There is much entertainment, also, to be derived in visiting these old places. It has occurred to me many times that, if we could only take one of these old gentlemen whom we have been talking about- Peter Hobart, for instance - by the hand, and walk about the streets of Hingham with him to-day, even the marvels of that Revelation about which he no doubt preached with much effect, would have seemed
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less wonderful to him than the realities he would find on every side. As I sat here I saw through the window, a moment ago, a train passing by that Bare Cove where he first landed, which carried more peo- ple than there were in Hingham while he lived; and through another window I saw a flag flying, of proud significance to us, yet quite meaningless to him. After all, he might derive but little satisfac- tion from his visit. I fear we should seem given over to the vanities of this world. He would hardly be able to breathe anywhere in Hingham that brac- ing spiritual atmosphere to which he was accustomed and which we have long since ceased to breathe.
I'could not hope, in the short hour that I had this morning, to do full justice to Hingham. It would have taken more than the hour allotted me for that; and I was therefore interested to find by a scrap which fell into my hands a day or two ago, that I had not altogether mistaken the character of Hing- ham, at least in the judgment of its contemporaries in former years. I have in my hand an extract from the Salem Mercury of July 7, 1789, which I will presently read to you. It is written in a somewhat patronizing spirit, and I am not aware that Salem was entitled to assume an air of patronage toward Hingham in those days. Nevertheless, there is much in it which I commend to your attention, and I will read it to you. It is quite brief, and published, let me remind you again, on the 7th of July, 1789. It says : -
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"It is a pleasing fact that for six years past there has been but one suit commenced in the town of HINGHAM, - and that was on a simple note of hand, by one of the inhabitants in a moment of passion. And, what is more extraordinary, there has been but one single jury action between parties in that town tried in Boston since the year 1740. The town of Hingham contains upwards of two thousand inhabitants, and it is a place of considerable business in agriculture, fishing, and manufactures. A cer- tain venerable patriot - but much neglected, except in times of danger -- had some cause for boasting that he received his birth in this peaceable and industrious little town."
I don't know who that neglected and venerable patriot was, but I entirely justify his boasting; I share in it myself. I have found Hingham - I will not say an excellent place to go away from, but cer- tainly an excellent place to return to, and a very good place to be transplanted into, as I have no doubt my friend upon my right, the President, agrees.
I cannot, indeed, as a lawyer, quite commend the condition of things exhibited in Hingham during the forty-nine years referred to in the newspaper. Matters, however, have improved in that respect since that time. I have had occasion recently to investigate the title to certain lands in Nantasket, and I had occasion to see, in the course of my re- searches in that lawsuit, that quite recently Hingham men had not ceased "troubleing themselves about Nantascot."
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I thank you for the indulgence with which you listened to me this morning; and now I wish you all peace and prosperity and that you may all attend the next centennial anniversary fifty years hence.
The PRESIDENT. - The next toast was to be a tribute to the great War Governor, John A. Andrew, and I hoped that his son, who has been at table with us, would remain and speak in response to it. The necessity of returning to his home in Beverly compelled him to go away.
The next toast is, - Ecclesiastical Hingham. As Shakespeare says, "Such harmony is in immortal souls."
The most boastful son of Hingham must admit that the town has fallen off in some respects. Our fisheries are not what they used to be, with the exception of the smelts. Our buckets are no longer our jewels. We never call on our doctors except with great reluctance. Nobody brags of our lawyers unless it be we lawyers ourselves. But our clergy- men have always been our glory, especially inside their own respective parishes. Generally they have been, it must be said, of the order of "fighting par- sons," -- Christians possibly, but of the muscular sort. The list, however, was never greater or more eminent than it is to-day, and every one of them a lion. Mr. Collier, will you strike out from the shoulder ?
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THE TOWN OF HINGHAM.
ADDRESS OF REV. H. PRICE COLLIER.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN : ¥
One hears of Hingham in these days as a place which is prominent because it is politically prolific. No doubt you will remember that Hingham is some- thing more than the home of two governors and a swarm of candidates for the legislature. But is it true of that barren country which lies around Hing- ham? Does the outside world know that Hingham
is something more than this? It may have no eccle- siastical prominence now, unless it be that of an ecclesiastical nursery, but just now we are living in the past. Shakespeare is not long dead, George Herbert has just published his poems, Milton is just twenty-seven years old, and Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, and Archbishop Laud, and Charles are devoting all their energies to the rehabilitation of a pale caricature of the Catholic church. With his own hands Laud helps to put in place again the stained-glass windows in his chapel. The dull, fierce eyes of the Earl of Strafford are watching for an opportunity to crush out Presbyterianism in Scot- land. And the vacillating Charles, whose royal word was a regal lie, was tottering between these two statesmen-crutches to his grave. We are living, if you please, in these times, - a paradise of perfidy. Sunday-school superintendents in village churches did not always become governors, and Puritan min-
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isters met the political magnates of the land in the star-chamber, rather than at the dinner-table. Those were days when religious liberty had no house in England, and was obliged to build itself a hut on the western coast of the Atlantic. As Winthrop said, " I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God."
It would take too long-and were it a short story it needs no repetition in Hingham -to tell how these men, forced by the fierce duplicity of their rulers, came to this country. They wer men, - men untouched by simpering etiquette and careless of social tyranny. Of course they were, or they would have built the " Mayflower" ten miles long and six miles wide, in recognition of the ances- tral longings of the Boston of two hundred and fifty years later. But they were men who were in- tensely in earnest, God-intoxicated men, and they have left a mark upon this civilization which can never be effaced, and New England can claim the greater share of them. Of the ministers whose work has come down to us, there is scarcely one who was not a native of New England, and not least among them are some of Hingham's ministers. There is one parish in this town whose ministers seem to have inherited the boldness of the man who would speak his mind. It is a commentary very sat- isfying to us Hingham people that our first pastor, Peter Hobart, was not allowed to preach in Boston, "because he was a bold man and would speak his
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mind." Hobart, Norton, Gay, Ware, Shute, Cole- man, Brooks, Brown !- what a pity it seems to me that I gave Mr. Long a solemn promise that I would not speak ten minutes, before he gave me permis- sion to speak at all. Dr. Shute, the statesman min- ister; Dr. Gay, the witty scholar, brilliant, pungent, and yet kindly; Coleman, who in his agricultural investigations in England became the friend alike of people and nobility, and in whose memory Lady Byron erected a monument; Brooks, whose direct intellectual descendant was Horace Mann, and who is appropriately called the Father of Normal Schools, - why, Hingham, in the past at least, without its ministers is like a coin without its superscription ; like a picture with nothing but the frame. And for- tunate it is for some of you, my friends, that you did not live in those days. One of the earliest acts of legislation was an agreement to fine every man who did not attend town-meeting, or who did not stay through all the proceedings of the meeting, a peck of corn. For not attending church service on Sunday a man was probably fined two pecks. It would need no stringent application of that law to- day to provide the Cadets with provisions for the whole summer. And mark you, it was considered a delectable privilege to sit patiently on the rough deal boards while the preacher turned the hour-glass for the third time. Nor were the ministers of those days merely apostles of religious truth ; they were the newspapers, with the society gossip left out ;
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they were very often the affable hosts of travelling strangers; they were the defenders of liberty, and the spokesmen of the people on all occasions. They stood for Tennyson's line, "'T is only noble to be good," and well did they exemplify it.
Nor were these days when many different tastes in religious matters were thought of. Curiously enough, it was on the same day, the 14th of Novem- ber, 1784, that the first Protestant Episcopal Bishop for America was ordained at Aberdeen, and the first Methodist Bishop preached his first sermon in this country. The parishes were under the jurisdiction of the people, as they are very much to-day. Congre- gationalism was and is ecclesiastical republicanism, and no one wished nor dreamed of anything else.
Indeed, I am inclined to think that a later philoso- phy of history will claim for Puritanism that it is the ancestor of American Democracy. But let me comfort you before I close by telling you that these men had at least one weak point, which I have been able to discover. Most of the bread of that day was made of rye or Indian meal. The ministers alone had white bread, because they said the other gave them the heart-burn, and they could not preach on it. But that is a small crevice in the armor of their sturdy unselfishness.
Hingham owes much that is strong and good and great in the two hundred and fifty years of its cor- porate existence to its ministers. They comforted in the wilderness, they incited to patriotism when
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patriotism was a crime, and they did much of the scholarly literary work which enables us to look for- ward into the dim future to the time when we shall have, instead of. affable reports, a town History. I know of none of these men who need my defending, and I fancy most of them have a fame that cannot profit by my praise. But, my friends, Hingham is not Hingham without their memory; Hingham loses some of its boldness when it forgets Hobart, some of its brilliancy when it forgets Gay, some of its astuteness when it forgets Shute, and much of its recognized ability abroad when it forgets Coleman and Brooks. And were one to wish Hingham ecclesiastical prosperity in the future, he could do no better than to wish a repetition of its bold, brilliant, devout, and scholarly past.
The PRESIDENT. - The next toast, ladies and gentlemen, is so comprehensive that I have not embraced it in any form of words. A well-known neighbor of ours in the adjoining town of Quincy once told me, I am very sure, that of all titles he preferred that of the " School-master." I shall chal- lenge his ability as a teacher in one respect, for I do not believe it possible that he could teach any pupil the eloquence of which he is himself the master. There is one title on which he and I, however, shall agree, and I will introduce him by that: A descendant of Hingham stock, - Dr. Everett.
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ADDRESS OF DR. WILLIAM EVERETT.
I THINK, MR. CHAIRMAN, that I am more pleased to be introduced to-day as a descendant of Hingham stock than by any other title, and for the reason that, although I am also a descendant of Concord stock, they did not see fit to invite me to Concord last Sat- urday. Why, when the orator of the day began the list of the original freemen of Concord in 1635, he began with the name of an ancestor of mine, and I was not there to respond. But on this occasion it is not merely your neighbor from Quincy; it is also the descendant of Nicholas Jacob and of John Otis that has the pleasure of speaking to you. I have felt here, sir, to-day as if I must be asked as a representative of the past and not of the present at all. I had the pleasure of driving up to this din- ner, not as a governor or an ex-governor, not as a member of any staff or any body, legislative or otherwise, but as a survivor of the celebration of fifty years ago, and, as you remarked, scarcely to be distinguished from those I was with. The next thing was that my friend Dr. Miles remembered me two years before I was born. And that made me feel still older. And when Governor Robinson began to enumerate the things which were younger than Hingham, he spoke of the Commonwealth as younger than Hingham, and he spoke of Harvard College as younger than Hingham; but I felt that
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I belonged and still belong to a body that is not younger than Hingham, but is of exactly the same age. In the same year in which Concord was founded and the older Hingham took its name, the Boston Latin School was founded, - in 1635, - the oldest educational institution in this State, the institution wherein our fathers showed what were the things which boys ought to be taught then, and what are the things which they ought to be taught now.
I am glad to come here as a descendant of Hing- ham, and to assure you that in looking up this question of genealogy, in finding out that I am descended from the early settlers of Hingham, I have been led into a study of things that I never knew before. And speaking to-day as a school- master, I would say a few words on this question of what we ought to study. The schoolmaster is on his trial now before the people of this country. The schoolmaster is expected to say in any public audience what are the things that our boys and girls ought to study. Well, now, I have been making a study, during this last vacation, of a thing that I never studied before, and that I never knew the interest of, and, of all things in the world, it is Amer- ican history. I thought I knew it. I thought I had
- studied American history; but I had studied it as I might study the history of another nation. I had studied American history as I might study English, or Grecian, or Roman history, -as the story of other men and other women who used to live here.
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It is only in this vacation that I have begun to study American history as the history of my own ances- tors. It is only this vacation that I have begun to read of the men and the women that founded Hing- ham, and founded Concord, and founded Plymouth, and from whom I knew I was descended; and let me assure you, if there are any of you here who never studied American history that way, -- if there are any who have only studied it in the general treatises which we read in our schools and colleges and libraries, - you know nothing of it. Find out what some of your ancestors were. Find out who were the men and women from whom you came, seven generations or six generations or five genera- tions ago, and then go back to the history as written by their contemporaries. Go back and read the old books that were written by the very men who saw Hingham and Concord and Plymouth founded. Read Bradford's wonderfully recovered History of Plymouth Plantation ; read Winthrop's Journal of the Foundation of Massachusetts; read Sewall's Diary at the end of that century ; read all those old books themselves, and read them to find the births and marriages and deaths of your own ancestors. Read them with a lot of familiar household names from which you were descended tingling in your cars, and I tell you that old history will come to be a thing that you never dreamed it was before. I tell you there is an interest in the household life of Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies, of towns like
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this and Concord and Ipswich and Dorchester and Quincy that you never dreamed of when you merely read the treatises written by men of later days.
And you will find your respect for those men and women raised. There is a fancy now of running down our ancestors. There is a fancy now of criti- cising the founders of Massachusetts and Plymouth, and making out that because we are perched upon our fathers' and mothers' shoulders, we are much greater people than our fathers and mothers were. You agree to that fashion, perhaps; you are given to submitting when your ancestors are depreciated. That is because you have read history in the later epitomes and condensations and selections of mod- ern writers that did not understand the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Go back and read the history and the diaries and the town records, as the founders of Massachusetts and Plymouth wrote them with their own hands and sealed them with their own blood; and you will come back feeling that the founders of this town two hundred and fifty years ago do not need to be apologized for or excused now. They wrote out their own opinions, they stood up before the whole world to defend them ; they concealed and evaded nothing. In those memoirs of their own they will appear to you doubtless as carnest and serious. But they are not morose or gloomy ; their hearts are as warm as their heads are keen or their hands strong ; the men who laid low the forest here and the tyrant in Europe will hold out their very
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hands to you to clasp, and you will find that the pulses of those hands, eight generations ago, beat the very octaves of your own. You will be prouder than ever of being descended from them, and you will feel that the Puritan was the best man then, just as the "Puritan" is the best boat now.
If you will read that history as they wrote it them- selves, you will find some little facts that you do not meet in the general histories. You know that the general histories speak of a very bold Governor. They tell about Governor Endicott who ripped the cross out of the flag, and how the Governor stood up alone defying the world. Now you read that history as it actually appears on the records of the General Court, and you will find that the General Court told Governor Endicott he had no business to rip that cross out of the flag, that it was a very rash and indiscreet action ; and he had to apologize for it. So you see that there are greater men than governors, and there were men who could control governors in those times, and that the representa- tives of the people can tell governors what they ought to do, when they get too bold.
Now, a word suggested by that boat. When I first came to Hingham I was warned against one thing. My friend, Mr. Jenks - I am sorry to see he is gone - said : " Whatever you do when you go to Hingham to preach, you must n't say the 'old church,' you must talk to them about the 'old meet- ing-house;' they don't want to have it called the
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'old church ;' and, above all," said he, "whatever you do, don't call it the ' Old Ship;' they don't like to hear it." Now, fellow-citizens, my dear seventh cousins once removed, I think you make a mistake in not sticking to that name of the "Old Ship." I think if I were you I would use that and keep to it. You know that nicknames are very disgraceful at the beginning, but they get to be very honorable in the end. The liberators of Holland were called " beggars," and that was meant as a disgrace; but it came to be very honorable. The name " Puritan " began by being a nickname, and the name " Metho- dist" began by being a nickname; they are both perfectly honorable. The word "mugwump" began by being a nickname; it is perfectly honorable now. But if I were you I would cling to that name of the " Old Ship." It seems to me that we can use no more touching name for a place of worship than if we compare it to the ship, - to the ark that floats the waves of this world, and within whose safe walls the chosen people of God may ride the seas when the storms beat upon them. And, too, in calling that venerable building the "Old Ship," you will be reminded through all time of those old ships that brought over the chosen, whom God had se- lected to plant the wilderness. Remember how much liberty, how much conscience, how much de- votion, how much manhood and womanhood was held within those barks that rode the seas from 1620 to 1640. Think of all the sainted names of the
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ships in which the first settlers came, - the " May- flower " and the " Fortune " and the " Ann " and the little " James " and the " Arbella " and the " Griffin " and the " Mary and John " and the " Defiance " and the " Lion " and all those noble barks. They crossed the sea again and again. Did you know it? Did you know that there was a regular line of emigrant packets at the time Hingham was founded, as regu- lar as Enoch Train's packets when you and I, Mr. President, were boys? Why, those Plymouth people talk as if the " Mayflower " made but one voyage ! The " Mayflower" was a regular emigrant packet that plied back and forth between England and América for twenty years, bringing cargo after cargo of planters to settle the wilderness. Every one of those ships was just as well known as the Cunarders or the White Stars are now; and they crossed the ocean like shuttles from side to side, each charged on the outward passage with its precious freight, the seed corn that was to plant the wilderness ; each charged as it went back with the gallant messages of the planters, who choked down their pains and their sufferings and their toils, and always sent back the same word of cheer to the brethren they had left behind in dear old England. Think of that ship that came in with the precious cargo at the time when Governor Winthrop had his last loaf in the oven and every other soul in Massachusetts was starving! Think of that first ship built by him, " The Blessing of the Bay," which carried out from
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