The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
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Cushing, Job, 1785-1867

Job Cushing Account Book

1826-1863
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 207 bd

Farmer from Cohasset, a shipbuilding and fishing town in eastern Massachusetts. Includes customer accounts, the services he performed (such as plowing up and hauling field stones to the wharf, and carting wood, merchandise, and iron), products he sold (potatoes and calves), and documentation of a hired Irish-born laborer.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

Job Cushing (1786-1867) was the first son of a Cohasset,
Massachusetts farmer and Revolutionary War veteran of the
same name. In 1819, he married Elizabeth Lincoln (1794-1882)
who also was the child of a local farmer and veteran of the
Revolution. They had seven children, six of whom survived
childhood.

Cushing’s farm was located near the center of the thriving
shipbuilding and fishing town of Cohasset, between Hingham
and Scituate. His accounts reflect his ability to earn extra
income by plowing up and hauling field stones to the wharf
for use as ballast by the schooners using Cohasset Harbor
(see, for instance, his accounts with Eleazar James, the Cove
Meadow Corporation, and Capt. William Kilburn). One schooner
captain reminisced in the History of Cohasset (1898) that the
ballast consisted “of field stones that the old glacier left
in our drumlins, and which ‘Uncle Job Cushing’ or some other
farmer hauls down to the wharf at one dollar per ton.”

Most of Cushing’s other accounts consist of the use of his
team for plowing or carting wood for neighbors and for
carting merchandise to the store of Morgan Stetson or
transporting iron to the blacksmith shop of Amos Tilden. The
principal products from Cushing’s farm were potatoes which he
sold to many customers and calves which he sold to the
butcher Elliott Stoddard. While never especially prosperous
(his property was valued at $3,900 in 1850), Cushing was able
to hire an Irish-born farm laborer, Patrick Mulvey, as he
advanced in years.

The inside front cover of the account book contains
writing by Thomas Lothver of Hingham, dated 1756, which
includes part of a prayer and a draft of a letter asking for
the payment of a debt.


Information on Use
Terms of Access and Use
Restrictions on access:

The collection is open for research.

Preferred Citation

Cite as: Job Cushing Accounts (MS 207). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

History of the Collection

Acquired from Charles Apfelbaum, 1987.

Processing Information

Processed by Ken Fones-Wolf, September 1988.


Additional Information

Sponsor
Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Language
English.

Subjects

Ballast (Ships)Cattle--Massachusetts--Marketing--HistoryCohasset (Mass.)--HistoryFarmers--Massachusetts--CohassetJames, EleazarKilburn, WilliamMulvey, PatrickPotatoes--Massachusetts--MarketingStetson, MorganStoddard, ElliottTilden, Amos

Contributors

Cushing, Job, 1785-1867

Types of material

Account books