Henry Dearborn Cushing

Quick Facts

Significance:

Lumber merchant, Temperance leader, 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee member

Place of Birth:

New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1803

Place of Death:

Washington, D.C

Date of Death:

October 16, 1881

Place of Burial:

Washington, D.C

Cemetery Name:

Oak Hill Cemetery

Boston merchant and temperance reformer Henry Dearborn Cushing served as a member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization established in response to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Born in New Hampshire in 1803, Henry D. Cushing moved to Boston, where he lived for more than fifty years. He established a successful lumber business and became involved in several reform movements, including anti-slavery and temperance.¹

Following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Cushing joined the third and final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization provided needed assistance to freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. Though Cushing did not appear on the official broadside identifying committee members, Austin Bearse listed him as a member in his memoir, Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Days in Boston. One historian refers to Bearse's list as the "Doorman's List." Among other things, Bearse watched the door at any closed meetings of the Vigilance Committee and maintained a list of who would be allowed in.² 

Vigilance Committee records indicate two donations by Cushing, both made in 1851. In March, he specifically contributed funds for the "defense of the rescuers of Shadrack," the first freedom seeker caught in Boston under the new Fugitive Slave Law.³ Fellow Vigilance Committee members, including Lewis Hayden, successfully freed Shadrach Minkins in a brazen courthouse rescue.

Cushing did not just contribute financially to the Vigilance Committee. In April 1851, he joined others to keep watch on the courthouse where authorities held Thomas Sims, the second freedom seeker apprehended in Boston under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. Authorities arrested Cushing and six others for "for manifesting their anti fugitive slave notions" and "refusing to leave the Court House when told."⁴

Despite his participation in the anti-slavery movement and Vigilance Committee, Cushing is most known for his leadership and contributions to the temperance movement.⁵ Upon his death, the Temperance Alliance wrote that they had "lost one of its most active, energetic and truest members."⁶ One obituary stated that as a businessman, Cushing "amassed a fortune, a large portion of which he generously divided among charitable institutions and temperance organizations."⁷ He even ran unsuccessfully for political office several times, initially as a Republican and later as a member of the Prohibition Party.⁸

Cushing died of heart failure while visiting family in Washington, D.C. His remains are buried there in Oak Hill Cemetery.⁹ He never married and upon his death left his considerable fortune to his sisters, sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews. He also left 5% of his estate to his friend Reverend A.A. Miner "in Trust, to be used by him at his discretion to promote the Temperance Cause."¹⁰

Footnotes

1. "Henry D. Cushing," Boston Daily Advertiser, October 18, 1881, 8.
2. Austin Bearse, Reminisces of the Fugitive Slave Law Days (Warren Richardson, 1880), 3, Internet Archive, Dean Grodzins, "Constitution or No Constitution, Law or No Law: The Boston Vigilance Committees, 1841-1861," in Matthew Mason, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright, eds., Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 73, n.57.
3. Francis Jackson, Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of Boston, Dr. Irving H. Bartlett collection, 1830-1880, W. B. Nickerson Cape Cod History Archives, Internet Archive, 27, 83.
4. "Arrest of White and Colored Sympathizers," Boston Daily Mail, April 5, 1851, 4.
5. "Temperance Organization," Boston Evening Transcript, November 6, 1850, 3.
6. "Temperance Alliance," Boston Evening Transcript, November 2, 1881, 4.
7. "Henry D. Cushing," Boston Journal, October 17, 1881. Though some sources and obituaries place his birth in Maine, most, including the 1850 Federal Census, have him born in New Hampshire. Maine appears to be the birthplace of his parents. 1850 Federal Census. The National Archives in Washington D.C.; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M432; Residence Date: 1850; Home in 1850: Boston Ward 10, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 337; Page: 309a and Ancestry.com. U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
8. "Republican Ticket," Boston Evening Transcript, November 11, 1854, 2; "Municipal Elections," New England Farmer, December 13, 1873, 2.
9. Ancestry.com. U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
10. "Henry D. Cushing," Boston Post, October 18, 1881, 4; Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Probate Records, 1636-1899; Author: Massachusetts. Probate Court (Suffolk County); Probate Place: Suffolk, Massachusetts, Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.