History
Hingham was settled in 1635 — one of the earliest towns of the Massachusetts Bay Colony — and from the start its life was tied to the quiet, sheltered waters of Hingham Bay. Coopers, fishermen, and shipwrights built a working harbor that supplied Boston with cordwood and salt cod for two centuries. In 1681 the townspeople raised the Old Ship Church, today the last surviving 17th-century Puritan meetinghouse in the United States and the oldest wooden church in continuous ecclesiastical use. During the Second World War the harbor transformed into a sprawling Navy shipyard that launched destroyer escorts and landing craft; the long pier and granite seawalls of that yard still frame the waterfront, now repurposed as a marina, ferry terminal, and harborside village.