A cluster · the buried social network

The Whitings of Hingham

The Whiting name is among the most frequent at High Street Cemetery, more than two dozen of them rest here, and the cemetery’s own chapel carries the name. Read the stones in order and a family emerges: a Revolutionary soldier who lived to eighty-eight; a generation of nineteenth-century Whitings who married into the Fearing and Cushing families already buried nearby; a daughter, Sarah Henrietta, who carried the Whiting name into the Caryl line; and, in the Caryl lot, the small stone of her son Albert, who did not reach his first birthday.

These were not isolated names. They married one another’s neighbors, buried their children in the same decades, and kept returning to the same ground. What follows is the family as the record allows us to see it, and, just as plainly, where the record runs out.

What we have not yet established: the exact genealogical links between these Whitings, who was whose child, are not all confirmed here, and we do not guess at them. Each life below is sourced on its own; the lines we draw between them are only the ones the records actually support.

The people, in order of birth

  1. Solomon Whiting 1724–1813

    A Hingham blacksmith who lived eighty-eight years, through the whole of the Revolution. The town's muster rolls name a "Solomon Whiton", but cannot tell him apart from his son of the same name.

  2. Charles Whiting 1808–1887

    An edge-tool maker of Liberty Plain who married Anna Cushing Fearing, the eldest of Ezekiel Fearing's seven daughters, and one of four Whiting men who wed four of those daughters.

  3. Albert Whiting 1810–1891

    A master mason and builder of Liberty Plain, married into the Fearings; the memorial chapel that still stands in this cemetery was raised by his son in his memory.

  4. Sarah Gilkey Fearing Whiting 1814–1894

    A blacksmith's daughter of Liberty Plain who married the master mason Albert Whiting; the couple is remembered by the Whiting Memorial Chapel their son raised in this cemetery.

  5. Amasa Whiting 1821–1883

    A Whiting of Liberty Plain who married a Fearing and kept the family homestead, one of four Whiting men who wed four Fearing sisters.

  6. Hannah Lincoln Fearing Whiting 1825–1910

    A blacksmith's daughter of Liberty Plain who married Amasa Whiting, one of four Fearing sisters who each wed a Whiting man.

  7. Albert Turner Whiting 1833–1909

    The eldest son of a South Hingham mason who, having outlived his parents, his wife, and his only child, built the stone Whiting Memorial Chapel that still stands in High Street Cemetery.

  8. Sarah Henrietta Whiting Caryl 1849–1929

    Daughter of the builder Albert Whiting, married into the Caryls, and mother of an infant son she outlived by fifty-seven years.

  9. Albert Whiting Caryl 1871–1872

    An infant who lived less than a year, named for his grandfather the builder, his small stone naming both his parents.