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History of Hull, MA

The History of Hull

By John Galluzzo

Like the famed roller coaster that once dominated its southern skyline, the Town of Hull has ridden through many peaks and valleys throughout its first three and a half centuries.

The first non-native settlers of the peninsula arrived shortly after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620. Myles Standish, Isaac Allerton and several other adventurers from the new plantation visited Hull in the spring on 1621, led by their native guide Squanto. By 1622 a small settlement had begun to grow, and by 1628 the men of Hull had become sought-after experts in fishing by moonlight. Governor John Winthrop of the new settlement at Boston visited the northern headlands of the peninsula early in the 1630s to determine its viability as a military site, an outer defense for the growing community deeper inside Boston Harbor. After spending two days in a pounding storm, eating raw mussels from the beach, he opted instead to build a fortress at Castle Island, citing logistical difficulties in reaching the outer arm of the harbor with food and other military supplies.

In 1644, the land until that point known as Nantasket, or "the place between the tides" to the native Massachusetts Indians who still traveled to the area seasonally, became known as Hull. Various theories remain today as to why the people of Hull chose the name they did, and the truth may never be known, but the community's rapid growth led to an old axiom that would be repeated into the nineteenth century: "Hull had fifty houses, when Boston had but one."

1644 also marked an important environmental moment for the seven-mile peninsula, as the city of Boston ordered the trees of Hull be cut down to provide timber for new barracks at Castle Island. Thirty-two years later, the people of Hull passed some of the New World's earliest environmental legislation, when they voted against cutting down any more small trees on the peninsula, hoping to allow them to grow and repopulate the once-thriving forest that ran the length of the land.

The community at Hull centered solely in the northwestern end of town at that time, the area known as Hull Village. Shielded on the northeast and southwest by hills with a natural spring in the vale between, Hull Village offered good grazing lands for cattle and sheep and protection from fierce northeast storms. Through the 1600s and early 1700s the settlers of Hull Village - known as the "Moon Village at the end of the earth" to the people of neighboring Hingham - worked at farming and fishing to survive.

Late in the 17th century, the people of Hull, realizing their prominent position at the mouth of the increasingly busy harbor, began burning bowls of pitch and tar on tall poles on the northern headlands, rudimentary aids to navigation to help ships searching for the port of Boston. In 1716, they watched as Boston Light, America's first lighthouse, threw its rays seaward for the first time from Little Brewster Island, land donated by the town of Hull for that purpose.

Yet, even as the community grew, if at a very slow pace, supplies could still be hard to come by, proving Governor Winthrop right. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Hull faced many tough decisions. For instance, when asked to throw their tea into the ocean to protest the King of England and oppressive British rule, the people of Hull voted to keep the tea, but thumb their noses at the British with the rest of the Massachusetts settlers, citing that they might not see any tea again for a long time if they simply wasted it. Hull's geographic isolation fostered a special breed of independence that remains today.

During the early years of the American Revolution, the people of Hull witnessed a fair share of action. Governor Winthrop's original concept for a coastal defense site on the Hull headlands finally came to be, as colonial and later French engineers and soldiers constructed earthwork ramparts on what would later be known as Telegraph Hill, dubbing their creation Fort Independence. Guns from the fort fired on a British longboat chasing colonial raiders that had attacked enemy troops rebuilding Boston Light during the Siege of Boston, landing a direct hit on one, scattering or killing its occupants. As a result of that raid, the colonials carried a wounded British marine to the home of the local royal tax collector, Lieutenant William Haswell, and asked him to care for him. When the young man died, Haswell and his daughter Susanna buried him in the flower garden behind their home, now the site of the Hull Public Library. Susanna returned to Boston many years after the war, then known as Susanna Rowson, and opened the first school for oratory for girls in the United States.

Forced to evacuate the town to make room for French marines and sailors arriving to defend the area in 1778, many Hull residents left and never returned. The population dropped to approximately 125 souls and remained there for the next 50 years. Life in Hull became so tough that the people who remained after the war felt they'd be better off by themselves, voting to secede from the new United States on December 20, 1785.

In 1826, two events of note occurred in Hull, events that would shape the town's history for the next century. That year Paul B. Worrick of Hingham opened "The Sportsman," a tavern and stagecoach stop that became the first hotel in Hull, and in November, Joshua James was born. Fifteen years later, in December of 1841, Joshua James saved his first life, alongside the volunteer lifesavers of the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Sixty-one years after that, on March 19, 1902, he stepped out of his lifeboat and died on Stony Beach at age 75, after saving approximately 1000 lives, known as the most decorated lifesaver in the history of the United States.

By the 1840s, developers began looking at Hull as a potential goldmine, as the chasm between the haves and have-nots create by the industrial revolution sent the haves looking for places to go to avoid the have-nots, and to take advantage of the salubrious atmosphere of the beach. In 1854, Colonel Nehemiah Ripley opened the Rockland House, and in 1879, the Damon family opened the Atlantic House. With a major county road laid out from Atlantic Hill to Stony Beach in 1872, and the arrival of a railroad in 1880 to link with the steamboats that had been moving between Hull and Boston since 1818, Hull had been discovered.

For the next five decades, Hull and Nantasket Beach shined as the places to be in New England in summer. The Hull Yacht Club attracted luminaries such as shipping magnate William F. Weld, Columbia bicycle pioneer Albert Pope, bookseller Charles Lauriat, and Lizzie Borden's defense attorney, Melvin Ohio Adams. The Hull steamboats began running a million people a year to Pemberton and Nantasket Beach, and in 1905, Paragon Park rose from a disorganized smattering of attractions at the southern end of town. All the while the people of Hull continued fishing in the winter, surviving storms like the gales of November 1888 and the Portland storm of 1898, becoming famous as lifesavers and storm fighters.

By the time the Depression struck the United States, in November 1929, many of the Hull hotels had already burned, by arson or accidents. On Thanksgiving Day of that year, the hibernating steamboat fleet caught fire at their wharf, on the one day the entire fire department - who doubled as the Hull football team - was out of town. The end of Hull's grand era had arrived.

Hull struggled through the 1930s like every American community, and proudly served the country during World War II. During the war, Hull converted many of its summer homes for use as year-round residences, inviting workers toiling at local shipyards and naval ammunition depots to live there. Paragon Park thrived through and after the war, but it, too, closed in 1985.

The ensuing sixty years since World War II have seen a slow climb back to the days of the late nineteenth century, as the construction of a new major hotel, the establishment of several historical museums and other attractions, and the continuing natural attraction of five miles of sandy beach have combined to lure visitors to Hull during all seasons, but especially in summer. Today, as Hull looks to capitalize on its location more than ever, the future looks as promising as it did to the first settlers who stepped onto the peninsula nearly four hundred years ago.

(This history was provided by John Galluzzo and is also printed in the Hull phone book.)

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