Old Ship Church

See also: List of the oldest buildings in Massachusetts and Oldest buildings in the United States

Old Ship Church (Old Ship Meetinghouse)
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Old Ship Church
Location:	Main Street Hingham, Massachusetts
Coordinates:	42°14′29″N 70°53′13″W / 42.24125°N 70.88695°W / 42.24125; -70.88695Coordinates: 42°14′29″N 70°53′13″W / 42.24125°N 70.88695°W / 42.24125; -70.88695
Built:	1681
Governing body:	Private
NRHP Reference#:	66000777 [1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966
Designated NHL:	October 9, 1960

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]

The most distinctive feature of the structure is its Hammerbeam roof, a Gothic open timber construction, the most well-known example that of Westminster Hall. Some of those working on the soaring structure were no doubt ship carpenters; others were East Anglians familiar with the method of constructing a hammerbeam roof.

History

The first minister of the Hingham congregation who built Old Ship was the Rev. Peter Hobart, who had attended the heavily Puritan Cambridge University.^[5][6] Natives of Hingham in Norfolk County, East Anglia, Peter Hobart, his father Edmund and his twin brother Capt. Joshua Hobart were among Hingham's most prominent early settlers.^[7] Edmund Hobart and his wife Margaret (Dewey), said Cotton Mather, "were eminent for piety and feared God above many."^[8] Assisting Hobart in the foundation of the congregation was Rev. Robert Peck, Hobart's senior and formerly rector of St Andrew's Church in Hingham, Norfolk.^[9]

Interior, Old Ship Church, Hingham. Original seating chart from the 1680s in frame on wall beside upstairs window

After 44 years of service, minister Peter Hobart died on Jan. 20, 1679, on the eve of the building of the new house of worship. Hobart's diary of events in Hingham, begun in the year 1635, was continued on his death by his son David. By the time Old Ship was built, Harvard-educated Rev. John Norton,^[10] who had been ordained by Peter Hobart, had assumed Hobart's ministry.^[11] (Rev. John Norton was the great-grandfather of Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams of Braintree, Massachusetts.)^[12][13]

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.^[14] The matter of replacing the old thatched log meeting house stirred intense emotion in Hingham, and it took two heated town meetings to settle on a site for the new edifice, which was built on land donated by Capt. Joshua Hobart, twin brother of Rev. Peter Hobart. Ultimately, the town appropriated £430 for the new building, said to be the equal of any in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.^[15] The modern frame edifice, devoid of ornamentation, was raised in 1681, and accommodated its first worship service the following year.^[16]

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 1681, 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.^[17]

The John Leavitt pew in Old Ship Church, designated for the deacon, still remains set aside today.^[18]

Detail, window, Old Ship Church, Hingham

Gravestone of Margrett Leavitt, died June 13th, 1739. Hingham Cemetery, Old Ship Church

Gravestone of Mary Revere Lincoln, daughter of Paul Revere, Old Ship Burying Ground

Tomb of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, Old Ship Burying Ground, Hingham

Governor John Andrew, buried in the Old Ship Church Cemetery, Hingham

Current use

The current minister is Kenneth Read-Brown, a descendant of Rev. Peter Hobart.^[19] The congregation is Unitarian Universalist and is a Welcoming Congregation. Some of the meetinghouse furnishings still in use date to its founding: Old Ship's christening bowl, for instance, was made before 1600 and was likely brought to the Massachusetts Bay Colony by emigrants from Hingham, England.^[20]

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 6-acre (24,000 m²) tract of land granted by the town to Thomas Gill, one of Hingham's earliest settlers. (It now comprises 16 acres (65,000 m²), and is the largest and oldest cemetery in Hingham.)^[21] 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,^[22] Lincoln, Fearing and other prominent early families.^[23][24]

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 Richard Derby, father of 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; Solomon Lincoln (1804–1881), Hingham attorney, author of first history of Hingham (1827), state senator, president of Boston's Webster Bank, and president of the Hingham Cemetery Corporation.^[25]

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.

Old Ship Parish House, Hingham, Massachusetts

See also

• Oldest churches in the United States

References

1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html. 
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. ^ Hubberd, Peter in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
6. ^ A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New England, John Farmer, 1829
7. ^ Hobart, History of Hingham, Massachusetts, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Hingham, Massachusetts, 1893
8. ^ Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England, Cotton Mather, Hartford, 1853
9. ^ Peck, Robert in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
10. ^ Rev. John Norton of Hingham, among the earliest graduates of Harvard College, was the son of William Norton of Ipswich, and nephew of Rev. John Norton who was the successor of Rev. John Cotton as pastor of First Church in Boston. [1]
11. ^ Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Vol. I; Charles Eliot Norton, Sara Norton, Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1913; Retrieved 2009-06-13.
12. ^ New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801, Stewart Mitchell, Reissued by READ Books, 2007, ISBN 1406740772, 9781406740776
13. ^ While Rev. Norton was the first pastor of the congregation at its new home in Old Ship Church, Rev. Peter Hobart was the founder of the congregation, although he died before the new meetinghouse was finished.
14. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Published by the Town, 1893.
15. ^ The Chataquan, Vol. XXX, The Chataqua Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1899–1900
16. ^ Old Ship, with its stark wooden pulpit and stripped-down interior, could not have been further from the houses of worship known to many of the East Anglians who settled Hingham, Massachusetts. It was, in a sense, the anti-Wool church.
17. ^ 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
18. ^ "John Leavitt's family gathers in Hingham for his 400th birthday", The Patriot Ledger, June 30, 2008.
19. ^ Following in His Hingham Footsteps after 350 Years, Connie Gorfinkle, GateHouse News Service, wickedlocal.com
20. ^ History of the Old Ship Meetinghouse, oldshipchurch.org
21. ^ Hingham Cemetery Facts, compiled by Lucinda Day, Director, PDF file
22. ^ A Discourse Delivered to the First Parish Church in Hingham, Sept. 8, 1869, Calvin Lincoln, Published by the Parish, Hingham, 1873
23. ^ Towns of New England and Old England, Ireland and Scotland, Allan Forbes, 1920
24. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Edward Tracy Bouve, John Davis Long, Fearing Burr, Published by the Town, 1893
25. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Vol. II, Thomas Tracy Bouve, Published by the Town, Printed by John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, Mass., 1893

External links

• Official website
• Hingham, The New York Times
• National Historic Landmark listing
• National Park Service Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
• National Register listings for Plymouth County
• Old Ship Historic Marker
• Reverend Peter Hobart Historic Marker
• Historic Churches of America, Nellie Urner Wallington, 1907
• Hingham Cemetery Facts, Lucinda Day (compiler), Hingham Cemetery Corporation