Sarah Gilkey Fearing Whiting

Sarah Gilkey Fearing was born on the 26th of March, 1814, in South Hingham, a daughter of the blacksmith Ezekiel Fearing and Anna Cushing Fearing, who kept their house on Main Street near Liberty Plain. The 1893 History of Hingham lists her among seven Fearing daughters in her father’s entry.

On the 24th of October, 1832, at eighteen, she married Albert Whiting, recorded in the History as a “Master-mason, contractor, and builder” who had been born in Boston and who settled his trade and his household on the same Main Street her father worked. Her marriage was one of several that bound the two families. Her eldest sister Anna had married Albert’s brother Charles Whiting in 1830; her sister Olive married Benjamin S. Whiting; and her youngest sister Hannah Lincoln married Albert’s first cousin Amasa Whiting in 1844. Four daughters of one Main Street house married into the Whiting line along that road, and three of those wives, Sarah among them, lie in this cemetery.

The marriage moved with Albert’s work before it came home. Their children were born where the building was: Albert Turner at Charlestown in 1833, George Franklin in Hingham in 1837, who died at three, Sarah Henrietta at Boston in 1849, and a second son, George, in Hingham in 1857. That younger George lived a long life, becoming a wholesale clothier at Boston and dying, by the Find a Grave record, in 1947. By the time he was born the family had settled for good at Liberty Plain, where the 1893 History found Albert still at his trade.

Sarah outlived her husband. Albert died about 1891 (a date from Find a Grave; the 1893 History, published in his lifetime, records none); she died on the 29th of April, 1894, after some sixty years of marriage. Neither lived to see the most visible thing the family would leave in this ground. In 1905 their eldest son, Albert Turner Whiting, raised the stone Whiting Memorial Chapel that still stands inside the cemetery, built in memory of his parents and of his wife, Harriet E. (Warren) Whiting, who died that January while the work was under way. The chapel carries the family’s names where visitors pass it. Sarah herself lies a short way off, under a plainer stone, the blacksmith’s daughter the building was partly raised to remember.

Family as recorded on Find a Grave

Ezekiel Fearing1787–1865also hereAnna Cushing Fearing1791–1878also here

Sarah Gilkey Fearing Whitingm.Albert Whiting1810–1891 (m. 1832)also here

Albert Turner Whiting1833–1909also hereGeorge Franklin Whiting1837–1840also hereSarah Henrietta Whiting Caryl1849–1929also hereGeorge Whiting1857–1947also here

SiblingsMary Adams Fearing Tower1817–1838 · Olive Cushing Fearing Whiting1819–1850 · Hannah Lincoln Fearing Whiting1825–1910

Relationships are as recorded on Find a Grave.