Sketches from the History of the Cushing Family
Chapter V: The Cushings in England and Their Emigration



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A recent visit of a great-grandson of Laban and Nancy Whitney Cushing to the home of the Cushings in Hingham, Norfolk, England, has suggested more material interesting to the readers of this little book.

Hingham and its environs, with a thousand years of history behind it, was the home of the Cushings. Norfolk is almost an island on the northeast end of the section known as East Anglia. It is cut off from adjacent counties almost entirely by rivers, and its ninety miles of sea coast suggest a neighborliness which has always existed with the lands across the eastern water. East Anglia extends from The Wash on the north to the Thames River on the south, and reaches out into the sea much as Wales (the ancestral home of the Whitneys) reaches into the western sea.

This fertile region early attracted the Angles and Saxons, who came from their bleaker northern homes to settle in the land which was destined to become one of the great nations of the world. Scandinavian, Danish, Flemish, and Dutch settlers came to this sea-grit land, each contributing the individual characteristics which were to make eventually the greatest race in history. From early times a considerable commerce was carried on with the low countries, and skilled artisans came to found and foster industries. These immigrants obtained important privledges from the Crown that were not often granted. The racial blendings, the commerce, the special liberties, and other causes gave East Anglia a distinctive development, and sturdiness and independence became characteristics of her people. East Anglia played an honorable and by no means inconspicuous part in shaping the destinies of England.

East Anglia, too, has exerted a deep influence on New England, and through New England, upon the development of the United States. Indeed the extent of that influence cannot yet be measured. Gepgraphically, they confess close relationship. The maps of Massachusetts Bay Colony and East Anglia look as if the same names had been shaken over them: Yarmouth, Ipswich, Cambridge, Weston, Lynn, Attleboro, Hingham, Waltham, Braintree, and many other names appearing in common.

History tells us that the Cushings were one of the leading families in Norfolk County during the 15th and 16th centuries, Thomas Cushing of Hardingham possessing large estates in Hardingham and Hingham, which he inherited from his father, William, who was born sometime during the 14th century. Through him a reasonably satisfactory line of descent can be traced from Ralf, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England from Normandy in 1066. Ralf was given the barony of Oxenburg in Norfolk, and forty-one other manors in several counties, with the lands of Christina, one of the sisters of Prince Edgar, whom Ralf married. Legends and fragments of history carry the story of Ralf's Norman descent back to a Viking ancestor who, when he was exhiled from Norway, became the founder and first earl of Normandy. He is known in later history as Rollo. The Normans or Northmen, then, as they came and settled in Norfolk among the East Anglians, only came, in a sense, to their own people, for the Scandinavians and Danes and Flemish, all originally were of the same great Teutonic race.

By the end of the 12th century, Norman and Saxon were one people, and the rich blend of many strains had strengthened the physical, mental, and moral fibre of the Englishman. A traditional Norfolkshire independence of thought in religious and political matters seemed inherent in these people, and we find that early there developed here a stronghold of the Reformation, and that later it became the center of this independency. In this region Wycliffe spread a knowledge of the Bible, and many Norfolk men perished in the persecution that overtook his followers.

The struggle for political freedom so closely bound up with ecclesiastical controversies also had a strong and effective support from the people of this little promentory. Cromwell's mother was a Norwich woman, and the great Puritan himself was often in this region; and from Norfolk came many of his "Ironsides," "men," he says, "that had the fear of God before them, and made conscience of what they did ... They were never beaten," he adds, "and wherever they were engaged against the enemy, they beat continually."

The non-conformist movement was led in Hingham and vicinity by the Reverend Robert Peck, who became minister of St. Andrew's Parish in 1605. He was a Cambridge man, who worked for the rights of his people against the encroachments of the court and the clergy throughout the fifty-three years of his ministry. In 1622 he baptized Samuel Lincoln, the progenitor of the Lincoln family in America, and he had earlier in the same venerable church baptized and ordained the Reverend Peter Hobart, who later became the founder and first minister of the settlement of New Hingham in New England.

During these years of bitter controversy, most difficult about 1635, many hundreds of people left Norfolkshire, some to go to the continental friends across the narrower sea, and some to journey far away to the Western land of freedom. As many as four thousand people left the vicinity of Norwich. The first exodus to America was probably in 1633, and two years later the second company came out, led by Peter Hobart. These people came to Charlestown, and from there to Hingham, where Peter Hobart offered prayer for the blessing of God upon the new settlement.

The Norfolkshire exodus grew steadily more serious. Finally a controversy over the position of the Communion Table in the Church precipitated an imminent break, and the venerable Robert Peck, who had vainly tried to adjust the differences of the authorities and his people, refused to submit any longer and fled over the seas, joining his former parishioners and friends in the New Hingham. Later he was recalled to England, where he remained in charge of the St. Andrew Parish until his death.

Robert Peck did not come alone. About thirty of the best families in Hingham came with him - men of the older generation, many of them fathers of those who had gone out three years before in 1635. These men came at great sacrifice, selling their possesions for half their value. With this group came Matthew Cushing. They embarked in the ship Diligent of Ipswich, 350 tons, John Martin, master, which sailed from Gravesend, 26th of April, 1638, with 133 passengers. The Bible of this our own emigrant ancestor is in a good state of preservation in a bank in Hingham, Massachusetts. In this Bible is a diary kept by Matthew Cushing recording the events of the passage over; the voyage lasted four months. At the present time the Bible is the property of a man named John Hollis, a resident of Hingham.

Here, then, during the years from 1630 to 1639, were some one hundred and fifty families transplanted from the level country of that eastern promontory, from the broad and fertile Norfolk fields, the comfort of well-established homes, the simple dignity of old Hingham, to the sandy soil, the shallow harbor, the hardships and desolation of the remote wilderness, to the frontier edge of an untrodden continent.

The predominating motive which brought them here was love of liberty. They were moved by that spirit of Democracy which in ever-increasing strength has been changing the face of the world, and whose greatest single expression is found today in our Republic. They believed, as the fourth great-grandson of Samuel Lincoln described democracy, in "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." And the Hingham Plantation in those early days contributed in no small measure to the formation of that spirit of New England independency which later so largely shaped our national institutions.

The mention of Abraham Lincoln recalls again the fact that the Lincolns who came from Hingham, England, to the Hingham settlement during these same years of unrest which we have described, were kin to the Cushings, and Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor of Abraham Lincoln, was also the ancestor of Laban Cushing. This descent has already been indicated in a table given earlier in these records.

Samuel Lincoln, born in Hingham, England, sailed for America with Frances Lawes, to whom he had been apprenticed as a boy to learn the weaver's trade. He was baptized, as recorded earlier in this paper, on August 24, 1622, in the Hingham parish church. A shipping list gives this information: "The John and Dorothy of Ipswich, William Andrews, master. Passengers, Frances Lawes, Liddia, his wife, one child Mary, accompanied by Samuel Lincoln and Anne Smith, sailed April 8, 1637, and reached Boston June 20." Samuel joined in Boston his brothers, Thomas and Daniel, who had preceded him.

The mystery of Samuel Lincoln's position as a servant is accounted for by the discovery of records of an old chancery suit. This document discloses that old Richard Lincoln, Samuel's grandfather, was married four times. His last wife, Anne Bird, persuaded her husband to make a will in favor of her and her children, entirely passing over Edward Lincoln, son of his first wife. A certain amount of land went to Edward, father of Samuel, but the personal property, and much land in Hingham and Swanton-Morely went to Anne's children. Edward died poor, but he left to America through his son Samuel one of the world's greatest legacies.

A bust of Abraham Lincoln was unveiled in the Hingham, England church in October, 1919, by the American Ambassador, Honorable John W. Davis. It is an exquisite bit of bronze and occupies a niche in the north wall of the nave. Underneath is a stone bearing in white letters this inscription:

"In this parish for many generations lived the Lincolns, ancestors of Abraham Lincoln, to whom, greatest of that lineage, many citizens of the United States have erected this memorial in the hope that for all ages, between that land and this land and all lands, there shall be malice toward none with charity for all."

The information in this article has been taken, much of it verbatim, from 

The History of Hingham, Norfolk, England 
The Settlement of Hingham, MAssachusetts, by Rev. Louis Cornish 
A Pilgrimmage to Old Hingham, by Rev. Louis Cornish 
Also the Cushing Genealogy