Albert Turner Whiting

30 Sep 1833 – 27 Sep 1909 · Boston resident; donor of the Whiting Memorial Chapel

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.

Albert Turner Whiting was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on 30 September 1833, the eldest child of Albert Whiting and Sarah Gilkey (Fearing) Whiting. His father, recorded in the 1893 town genealogy as a “Master-mason, contractor, and builder,” kept the family seat on Main Street at Liberty Plain in South Hingham, the stretch of road the High Street Cemetery still faces. By the account preserved at the Hingham Historical Society, the elder Albert superintended the stonework on large public works, among them the dry docks at the Charlestown Navy Yard, Castle Island in South Boston, Fort Independence, and the industrial canals of the Lowell Lock and Canal Company.

The son’s own life is recorded sparingly. The 1893 genealogy notes that he married Harriet E. Warren on 15 July 1856, that the couple had a daughter, and that he resided at Boston and, in Hingham, on Cottage Street. The entry names no trade for him, and none is asserted here. His brother George is listed as a Boston “wholesale clothier,” but what line of business Albert Turner himself followed in the city remains unknown.

What sets him apart is what he built, and what he had lost by the time he built it. His only child died in 1891. In January 1905, while his last great undertaking was under construction, his wife Harriet died as well. That undertaking was the Whiting Memorial Chapel, completed in 1905 in the High Street Cemetery, raised in memory of his parents and of Harriet, and designed by the Hingham architect J. Sumner Fowler, whose work also included the former Town Offices at 14 Main Street and Ames Chapel. In a town built largely of clapboard, it stands as one of Hingham’s only stone buildings, a fitting tribute from a mason’s son.

According to the cemetery record, Albert Turner Whiting died at Boston on 27 September 1909 and was buried in the cemetery whose chapel he had given, near the family he had outlived and remembered in stone.

Family as recorded on Find a Grave

Albert Whiting1810–1891also hereSarah Gilkey Fearing Whiting1814–1894also here

Albert Turner Whitingm.Harriet Emma Warren Whiting1835–1905also here

Helen G. Whiting1863–1891also here

Relationships are as recorded on Find a Grave.

What we don't yet know

Daughter's middle initial: the 1893 genealogy reads 'Helen O.' (OCR of a single typeset letter, which is unreliable), while Find a Grave gives 'Helen G.' Both forms refer to the same child; the initial is unresolved. This biography reports both and asserts neither.
Daughter Helen's birth year (1863) rests solely on Find a Grave; the 1893 genealogy gives her no dates. Only her 1891 death is independently attested (Out of the Archives).
Death years for the father (1891), mother (1894), and brother George (1947) come only from user-submitted Find a Grave records. The 1893 genealogy supplies their birth dates but, published that year, gives no death dates. The mother's 1894 death is also recorded on the companion sketch for Sarah Gilkey (Fearing) Whiting; the others await a vital record or stone.
The subject's death date, 27 Sep 1909, rests on the Find a Grave memorial, a user-generated source that could not be independently corroborated here; it is too late for the 1893 genealogy and is not given in the chapel account.
The exact day of his wife Harriet's death in January 1905 is not established; the month is given by the chapel account.
The 1893 genealogy does not name Albert Turner's own trade; no occupation is asserted here beyond his documented gift of the chapel.