There stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Hingham, Massachusetts, New England. It’s immediately across the street from the Samuel Lincoln house. In Hingham, England, United Kingdom there is also a statue of Lincoln. But why? And who was Samuel Lincoln?
The original Samuel was an Englishman who left his home near Hingham, England (100+ miles northeast of London) and moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637. He settled in, where else, the new town of Hingham, Massachusetts. The New England Hingham is a coastal town southeast of Boston. Think of it this way – if you look out the window of the tallest building in Boston (the John Hancock Tower) and look southeast toward Provincetown on the very tip of Cape Cod, you’re probably looking over Hingham. In any case, Samuel made his way to the New England Hingham from the old England Hingham as a teenager and started a long line of Lincoln descendants, including the one that begat the Abraham Lincoln lineage.
Abraham Lincoln never visited Hingham, Massachusetts (and obviously, not Hingham, England). He did come close once. In 1848, while a sitting congressman, Lincoln did a tour of Massachusetts campaigning for the Whig nominee for president, Zachary Taylor. The Mexican War hero (which the Whigs “very generally opposed” as unnecessary and unconstitutional) and southern slaveholder didn’t sit well with New England’s Conscience Whigs, who spun off into a Free Soil Party. Lincoln was there to try to keep them in the Whig fold. Taylor won the election, but it was closer than it should have been. He then inconveniently died sixteen months into his presidency, thus opening the door for the Compromise of 1850 and the nightmare that turned into. But that’s for another post.
The statue in Hingham, Massachusetts is a full size President Lincoln sculpted by Charles Keck. He is depicted sitting on a large stone staring downward in deep contemplation. The statue sits on a large pedestal. Standing in front of it, he seems to be staring at the viewer (or at his own feet, depending on your perspective).
The statue in Hingham, England is actually a bust, not a full statue. It was created based on the life mask of Leonard Volk made in 1860 just after Lincoln’s nomination. It depicts a much younger, beardless (and shirtless) Lincoln. It sits in an alcove on the side of St. Andrew’s Church. The bust was installed in 1919 to commemorate the Lincoln ancestry that had for many generations worshiped at the St. Andrew parish.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing both of these Lincoln memorials recently. I visited the statue in Hingham, Massachusetts during my tours of New England tracing Lincoln’s own two tours, one in 1848 and the other in 1860. I visited the bust in St. Andrew’s Church just a few weeks ago as I toured the UK seeing Lincoln statues from Edinburgh to Durham to Manchester to (near) Wales to Bath to Hingham. All of these visits gave me more insights into the Lincoln family tree, which I discuss in my new book, Lincoln in New England: In Search of His Forgotten Tours, which comes out March 3, 2026.
[Photos by David J. Kent, 2023, 2025]
Coming in March 2026: Lincoln in New England: In Search of His Forgotten Tours
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David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
