St. Paul Cemetery, Hingham

The cemetery and the parish office are not at the same address. The cemetery grounds are on Hersey Street. The parish office — where cemetery business is handled — is at 147 North Street, in Hingham Square. Directions given as "147 North Street" will take you to the church, not to the graves.

Cemetery matters are handled by Heather Allen at the parish, 781-749-0587. As a parish cemetery it holds its own records; the Hingham Town Clerk does not have them.

Finding a burial here

This is where St. Paul stands out. The parish maintains a public, searchable burial database covering the cemetery, at stpaulsma.cemsites.com. You can search by first name, last name, date of birth, and date of death, and results drop a pin on an interactive map of the grounds rather than just naming a section.

The database records veteran status alongside each burial, which is genuinely useful if you are trying to work out whether a relative's grave should be receiving a flag.

It covers the cemetery's sections: New A, New B, New C, Q (with South, Center, East, Cremation, and Infant areas), R, New T, and Garden T.

Find a Grave also indexes the cemetery well — about 5,600 memorials, roughly 78% photographed and 68% with GPS coordinates — and the Massachusetts Historical Commission catalogs it in MACRIS as HIN801. Between the parish database and Find a Grave, this is one of the easier South Shore cemeteries to research without leaving home. How to find an ancestor's grave on the South Shore covers the wider search when a name does not turn up.

One note specific to a Catholic cemetery: for the period before civil registration was consistent, the parish's sacramental registers may hold what no index does. Ask the parish office rather than assuming an absent record means an absent burial.

If you have located a grave here and cannot get to Hingham, we can walk the section, find the stone, and photograph it for a one-time fee of $15–$25.

Plantings and decoration rules

The parish does not publish rules on plantings, decorations, flowers, or seasonal removal that we have been able to find — the only cemetery document posted publicly is a pricing sheet. We are not going to guess at them, particularly at a cemetery where the rules may well be stricter or looser than the neighbours.

Call the parish office at 781-749-0587 before planting or placing anything. If you learn the current rules, we would be glad to hear them and will add them here with a note on when they were confirmed.

It is worth knowing how much this varies within Hingham alone. Hingham Cemetery permits fresh flowers for one week and prohibits artificial flowers outright; High Street Cemetery allows a 12-inch annual bed, a shepherd hook, and a December wreath, but no perennials. Two cemeteries, one town, and rules that contradict each other. Do not assume St. Paul follows either. General guidance on what suits a grave site in this climate is in what to plant at a grave site.

Lots, burials, and perpetual care

The parish publishes a pricing sheet, last dated July 2022, so treat the figures as orientation rather than a current quote and confirm with the office.

As published, burial lots run from $2,000 for a single lot or a double cremation lot, up to $3,000 and $5,000 for lots including a single- or double-deep crypt with the monument foundation. Monument foundations otherwise run $200 per square foot. Interment fees vary by season, day, time, and section.

Two things on that sheet matter beyond price. Perpetual care is 10% of the lot purchase price, due at the time of purchase. And winter charges apply from December 1 through March 31 regardless of temperature and conditions, with the parish noting that a grave may not be able to be opened at all during the winter months.

That winter note is a fair signal about the ground here. Frozen, saturated soil is hard on scheduling for any work at a cemetery, not only burials, which is one reason we favour a spring start for a new plot rather than trying to squeeze a first cleaning in late in the year.

Stone care here

An active parish cemetery of this size holds mostly granite and marble rather than the colonial slate found at Hingham's older burying grounds, though sections vary in age and the approach differs by material — granite, marble, and slate covers how each weathers and what each can safely take.

Hingham sits close enough to the water for salt to be a factor in how quickly stones green up, though less so than the fully exposed grounds in Hull or Cohasset. Why coastal headstones need more frequent cleaning covers what that means for how often a stone here wants attention.

We clean with D/2 Biological Solution across a minimum of three visits — no pressure washers, no wire brushes, nothing that leaves salts behind in the stone. Why D/2 and not bleach explains the reasoning, and the three-visit process covers what happens on site.

We have not found a published rule at St. Paul restricting who may do stone cleaning on the grounds, as some cemeteries do. We would still let the parish office know before working, which is ordinary courtesy and takes one phone call.

Veterans' graves

Because the parish database flags veteran status, St. Paul is one of the few cemeteries where you can confirm from a distance whether a relative is recorded as a veteran — a useful first step if you are trying to arrange a flag and are not sure the grave is on anyone's list.

We have not found a published flag policy for St. Paul, and practice varies a great deal from one cemetery to the next; our guide to flag placement covers the general etiquette and who to ask. We place and retire flags at the veterans' plots we care for at no charge.

Contacting the parish

Cemetery business goes through the parish office at 147 North Street, Hingham, MA 02043, on 781-749-0587 — ask for Heather Allen. The cemetery page is at hinghamcatholic.org/st-paul-cemetery and the burial database at stpaulsma.cemsites.com. We are not affiliated with the parish or the collaborative; we are a private care service that works in the cemetery.