Established 1681, privately administered, and stricter about plantings than most families expect.
High Street Cemetery sits at 19 High Street in Hingham, at the corner of High Street and Main Street. It was established in 1681, which makes it one of the older active burying grounds on the South Shore, and unlike most cemeteries in our service area it is privately owned and administered rather than run by the town.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Questions about a lot, a burial record, or what you are allowed to plant do not go to the Hingham Town Clerk — they go to the cemetery directly. Families searching town records for a High Street burial and coming up empty are usually looking in the wrong place.
The cemetery describes itself as private and non-denominational. Alongside the burial grounds it maintains two buildings: a Meeting House, renovated in 2016, and the Whiting Memorial Chapel, which has been updated with electricity, heat, air conditioning, seating, and lighting, and had its stained glass restored. The chapel is available for services and can be rented.
A columbarium was added in 2019, with niches located in Souther Field — a section of the cemetery on Cross Street, set apart from the main High Street grounds. If you are looking for a recent interment and cannot find it on the main grounds, Souther Field is worth asking about.
The Massachusetts Historical Commission catalogs the cemetery in its MACRIS inventory as HIN802. Find a Grave currently indexes roughly 2,350 memorials here, about four-fifths of them photographed — good coverage by South Shore standards, though as always an index is a starting point rather than a complete record.
High Street publishes a detailed set of rules, and they are stricter than families generally expect — particularly on perennials. Summarized, as of September 2026:
Three things follow from the rules above that are worth planning around.
Annuals only, which means someone has to replant. At most cemeteries we would suggest a low perennial base — sedum or dianthus — to hold the space through the off season with annuals rotated at the front. That approach is not available here. Every planting at High Street is a seasonal one, which makes the site a poor fit for a plant-it-and-forget-it arrangement and a good fit for a scheduled plan where somebody is coming back anyway.
Twelve inches, in front, and no longer than the stone. That is a genuinely small bed, and it rules out most of what a garden center will sell you as a memorial planting. Compact, low, drought-tolerant annuals are the whole category — the varieties in our grave-site planting guide that fit are marigolds, low zinnias, vinca, and pansies in spring.
The deadlines are real ones. Fall mums placed in late September have to come out by December 1, and a Christmas wreath by April 1. This is the most common way families run afoul of a cemetery's rules from a distance — not by planting something forbidden, but by leaving something permitted in place past its date.
An active burying ground dating to 1681 holds a wide range of stone. Expect thin colonial slate in the older sections, nineteenth-century marble, and modern granite, and each of those wants a different approach — granite, marble, and slate covers how they differ. The early slate markers in particular are more fragile than they look and are the last thing anyone should take a brush to.
Hingham sits close enough to the water that salt is a factor in how quickly stones here green up, though High Street is not as exposed as the Hull or Cohasset grounds. Why coastal headstones need more frequent cleaning covers what that means for scheduling.
We clean with D/2 Biological Solution across a minimum of three visits — no pressure washers, no wire brushes, nothing that leaves salts in the stone. Why D/2 and not bleach explains the reasoning, and the three-visit process covers what actually happens on site.
The rules explicitly permit a veteran plaque and one American flag abutting the monument, which is more permissive and more clearly stated than most cemeteries manage. Because High Street is private rather than town-run, flag placement here is not necessarily coordinated through Hingham's veterans' organizations the way it is at municipal grounds — worth confirming with the cemetery directly if you are counting on a flag appearing for Memorial Day. Our guide to flag placement covers the general etiquette, and we place and retire flags at the veterans' plots we care for at no charge.
Start with Find a Grave and BillionGraves, both of which have reasonable coverage of this cemetery. If that comes up short, contact the cemetery rather than the town — as a private cemetery, High Street holds its own interment records. How to find an ancestor's grave on the South Shore covers the wider search. If you have narrowed it to High Street and cannot get to Hingham yourself, we can walk the grounds, locate the stone, and photograph it for a one-time fee of $15–$25.
High Street Cemetery can be reached at 781-724-7193 or by email at hinghamhighstreetcemetery@gmail.com, and the website is highstreetcemetery.com. Lot purchases, burial records, chapel rental, and questions about the rules all go through them. We are not affiliated with the cemetery — we are a private care service that works in it.
Tell us roughly where the stone is — we work within the cemetery's rules, plant and clear on schedule, and send photos after every visit.
Request a Service (707) 653-6539