Much recent attention has been paid to Hingham’s 19th century industrial period, when our town dominated the national woodenware industry, and boxes, buckets, and wooden toys churned out of workshops and factories in South Hingham. Hingham’s former nickname “Bucket Town” is the title both of a recent book and a recent exhibition at Old Sturbridge Village.

This predominance waned in the later 1800s for a variety of reasons, but the steam-powered bucket factory that the Wilders had built on Cushing Pond in the 1840s came to a spectacular end when it burned down on Easter Day, 1902.

Fire at the Wilder Bucket Factory, Easter 1902. (Photo: Hingham Historical Society)

Fire at the Wilder Bucket Factory, Easter 1902 (Photo: Hingham Historical Society)