Burials since about 1672, an arboretum laid out on the Mount Auburn model — and the strictest rules of any ground we work in.
Hingham Cemetery occupies more than thirteen acres off South Street, beside the Old Ship Church. Burials here go back to about 1672, though the Hingham Cemetery Corporation itself was not incorporated until February 28, 1838 — a distinction worth keeping straight, since the grounds long predate the organization that now runs them.
It is run by an all-volunteer Board of Directors, supported by Friends of Hingham Cemetery, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It receives no municipal funding. Records, lots, and permissions go to the corporation at 781-749-1048 or info@hinghamcemetery.org — not to the Town of Hingham.
Unlike several cemeteries we work in, it is open year-round, dawn to dusk.
Like most Hingham burying grounds, it began informally — colonial burials near the meeting houses, on open land shared with grazing farm animals. The formal cemetery was laid out on land Adam Thaxter purchased from Thomas Loud and was modeled on Mount Auburn in Cambridge, the first of the American rural-cemetery movement. That lineage shows: the grounds are landscaped as much as they are laid out, with specimen trees planted across nearly six decades between 1844 and 1902, effectively making the cemetery an arboretum.
Landmarks accumulated with it. The Settlers' Monument of 1839 appears on the Town of Hingham's seal. The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument dates to 1870. Ames Chapel was built in 1886 and restored in 2015. A veterans' burial area was established in 1994, a Memorial Cremation Garden in 2001, and the Glades columbarium in 2023.
The stone spans the same range. Colonial slate by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century carvers sits alongside Victorian monuments by significant nineteenth-century American sculptors — and each material wants a different approach, which granite, marble, and slate covers.
Among the notable burials are Governor John Andrew, the Civil War governor of Massachusetts, and Peter Ourish, recorded as the youngest Civil War volunteer from Hingham.
Hingham Cemetery's rules are the strictest of any cemetery we work in, and families used to other South Shore grounds are often surprised. Summarized from the regulations approved in November 2025:
There is no seasonal planting program here in the usual sense. At most cemeteries we plant spring bulbs, summer annuals, and fall mums on a schedule. At Hingham Cemetery, anything permanent needs written Board consent first, and anything else is a one-week tribute. A family wanting continuous color at a grave here is asking for something the rules do not contemplate.
The one-week window makes timing everything. Fresh flowers for a birthday, an anniversary, or Memorial Day have to be placed close to the date rather than in advance, and they will be cleared shortly after. For a family at a distance, that is precisely the kind of errand worth handing to someone local.
Flags come out after a week. Notably tighter than St. Mary's in Scituate, which permits flags from May 1 through November 30. Our guide to flag placement covers how much this varies.
The contrast across four cemeteries within about eleven miles is stark: High Street, also in Hingham, permits a 12-inch annual bed and a Christmas wreath in December; St. Mary's permits annuals and perennials both; Cohasset Central publishes no planting rules at all. This is the reason we check each cemetery rather than working from a general policy.
We want to be straightforward about this, because it affects anyone you might hire — us included.
The cemetery's regulations reserve work on the grounds to the corporation and its approved agents. Section 8.7 provides that all monument cleaning on the grounds must only be done under Management's direction. Section 11.1 provides that Management arranges maintenance of all landscaping, and that no person or entity may perform such maintenance without Management's express, advance, written consent. Monument installation and grave opening and closing are similarly restricted to the cemetery's own contractors.
In practice this means a family cannot simply hire a cleaning service for a stone at Hingham Cemetery the way they can at most other South Shore grounds. Anyone doing that work needs Management's consent first, and the regulations direct lot holders to contact management to arrange professional maintenance.
So: if you have a stone here that needs attention, start by calling the cemetery at 781-749-1048. If Management is willing for us to do the work, we are glad to — under their direction and to their standards — and we will contact them ourselves before touching anything. If they would rather use their own people, that is their call to make and the right outcome for a cemetery of this significance.
We would treat any service that offered to clean a stone here without mentioning this as a warning sign.
Subject to the above, the material tells you what the stone needs. Hingham sits close enough to the water that salt is a factor, though the South Street grounds are less exposed than the Hull or Cohasset cemeteries — coastal stone care covers what that means for frequency.
The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century slates here are the fragile end of the range and the least forgiving of a wrong method. Why D/2 and not bleach covers what household cleaners and abrasives actually do to porous stone, and it applies with particular force to a stone that has stood since the 1600s.
The cemetery publishes a map of the grounds, and the corporation holds its own records — a private cemetery, so the Hingham Town Clerk will not have them. Start with Find a Grave and BillionGraves, then contact the corporation directly. How to find an ancestor's grave on the South Shore covers the wider search.
Locating and photographing a grave is not grounds maintenance, so we can walk the cemetery during open hours and send you photographs of a stone for a one-time fee of $15–$25 without any of the approval questions above coming into it.
Hingham Cemetery Corporation is at 12 South Street, Hingham (mailing address P.O. Box 105, Hingham, MA 02043), reachable at 781-749-1048 or info@hinghamcemetery.org. The website, which includes the cemetery map, Ames Chapel information, and the current rules, is hinghamcemetery.org. The cemetery takes no municipal funding and is supported by Friends of Hingham Cemetery. We are not affiliated with the corporation or the Friends.
Start with the cemetery at 781-749-1048 — work here needs Management's approval. We're glad to talk through what the stone needs, and to photograph it for you in the meantime.
Request a Service (707) 653-6539