This seashore community is about 10 miles southeast of Boston and was founded in 1635. From one end to the other (especially near the coast) Hingham is adorned by many period homes and dwellings, some built not too long after the town was settled. Hingham was and still is a rather affluent town. In the earliest days of the offerings of the electric light the community's selectmen opted for street lighting and residential electric service under an agreement with the Weymouth Light and Power Company. The latter had a generation facility near the town boundary (in Weymouth, MA) and by 1890 poles were set and wires strung into Hingham. The above photo is one of them.

By early 1894 the company had 58 residential Hingham customers with numerous incandescent and several arc lights at the most travelled intersections. Like many other communities, municipal street lighting contracts with electric companies opted for shutoff of street lights at 1AM. And consumer lighting service was generally offered only on cloudy days and during evening hours. That changed in later years, as you will read in subsequent additions to this series.

At that time Hingham selectmen were considering purchase of all of the lines, street light fixtures, poles and customers from the Weymouth company. Massachusetts statute allowed such purchases and by spring 1894 a deal was sealed.

Hingham is one of 40 municipal, locally owned and governed electric utilities in Massachusetts. And presently is among more than 2,000 consumer-owned electric utilities in the United States. The earliest days of their inceptions, thanks to progressive city and town leaders, are very similar to what you will be reading here in this series.

I grew up in this area and decided to focus a close and fun look upon Hingham, Massachusetts and the grassroots electric utility they founded 126 years ago. I did LOTS of insulator hunting there through the decades. I have compiled some interesting photos of their utility lines and related memorabilia in the town and will be presenting them here periodically with folklore and fun facts about what it was like being a municipal utility back in electricity's pioneer days; from the earliest through the postwar WW2 days (from Hingham's standpoint). Some old-school documentation, some very old-school documentation. Again, this ongoing mini-series closely reflects public power and some of its challenges. And nonetheless this history was not much different especially here in Massachusetts and across America as municipal lighting plants were springing up nearly everywhere.

Photo: Image taken in around 1894 of one of many poles purchased by the town from the Weymouth Light and Power Company with an incandescent street light. Atop it are a couple CD 138.2s. A few of these have been found upon Hingham lines in the 1970s. I'm sure there were lots more! A closeup of the top of this pole follows along with some reading about Hingham's first two years (1894-1895)..click "Next".