Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass.

Title

Dr. Cushman's house, Vernon Street :circa 1865

Description

According to US Census reports, Rev. Robert Woodward Cushman, D.D., a highly respected preacher and teacher throughout the Northeast, lived at the Vernon Street home in 1865 that had once been occupied by Thomas Emerson in 1765, and shoemaker John Sweetser in 1795 and 1812. The Baptist "clergyman" lived in the home with his wife Eliza and their daughter Ella, a teacher. Records indicate that the real estate was valued at $4,000 while his personal wealth was $1,000 indicating that he was a man of wealth. Born in Maine in 1800, Dr. Cushman was orphaned early in life, and at 14, According to US Census reports, Rev. Robert Woodward Cushman, D.D., a highly respected he began working as a cabinetmaker apprentice, watchmaker and jeweler. At the age of 16, "the influence of religious truth awakened him to a new life" and he went "from house to house, exhorting the people to repent." He went on to study under several notable preachers and graduated from Columbian College, now George Washington University. He was ordained as pastor of Poughkeepsie, NY's Baptist Church in 1826, and supplemented his meager $400 per year salary through teaching. His love for teaching and his great religious convictions continued onto Philadelphia where he founded the Cushman's Collegiate Institution for Young Ladies, while continuing his religious studies, and to Boston in 1841 as pastor of a newly founded Bowdoin Square Church. He returned to Washington D.C. where he served as pastor of the E Street Church and founded the French and English Protestant Seminary, a school of "high order" and said to be among "the best in the nation." He was twice nominated as Chaplain for Congress but declined. He returned to Boston in 1853 to establish the Mount Vernon Ladies School at 6 Allston Street. It has been said that, "As a writer, his style is chaste, elegant and terse, and as a speaker he is eloquent and convincing. He has, therefore, been called upon to give sermons and addresses on public occasions, almost without number, - several of which have been published." He published 22 works in 77 publications and was revered and widely read throughout the world.

Image from the Wakefield Municipal Gas and Light Department annual calendar, 2021

Photo courtesy of the Wakefield Historical Society.

Contributor

Institution: Lucius Beebe Memorial Library

Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light Department (Wakefield, Mass.)

D'Onofrio, Jayne M.

Coverage

Massachusetts--Middlesex (county)--Wakefield

Date

ca. 1865

Format

image/jpeg

Language

eng

Publisher

Wakefield, Mass. : Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light Department

Subject

Architecture, domestic

Cushman, Robert Woodward

Type

still image

Photographs

Original Format

1 picture :black and white

Extent

32 x 16 cm.