The father to our Edward Cushing - Edward D. Cushing - was born in Ireland in 1829 to Thomas Cushing and Catherine Scanlon. Little else is known (at least by the authors of this book) of his family or childhood other than that he had (at least) two brothers, Daniel and James. Daniel was a civil war vetran, which is where we learned the name of Ed Sr.'s parents.
In the 1830's and 1840's Ireland was a small agricultrual country, smaller than the state of New York. The majority of familes there depended upon farming to make a meager living. Potatoes were the staple food; most people couldn't afford bread.
During the potato famine of the 1840's, approximately a million people died of starvation. Roughly the same number of pepople immigrated to the United States. These Irishmen accounted for one in four of all European immigrants at the time.
The trip across the Atlantic by wooden sailing ship would have taken upwards of 35 days. Before an emigrant could board ship, he was given a perfunctory medical inspection, which might consist of a single question, "Are you quite well?" As a result, many who were ill with small pox, typhus, etc. were processed along with everyone else.
Hundreds died at sea each year. The cargo on the ships was usually treated better than the passengers. Cargo was safely stored in the hold. Passengers were crammed into bunks, sleeping four to a berth. The narrow gangways were piled high with possessions. Passengers who didn't bring their own rations had to endure hunger and thirst, since the supply of food and water might be cut off for days. Everyone was filthy because the water had to be saved for drinking.
It is not known when or how Ed Sr. met and married his first wife, Mary Curran. He would have been 20, she 24. Very little is known about her - even her last name has not been verified. Contemporary records (usually census) say that she was born about 1825 - both in Ireland and New York! She was unable to read or write, which was not unusual for the day.
Ed Sr. & Mary had a son James born 1849 (so it is reasonable to assume they married before this), followed by daughters Mary and Hannah. Ed Sr. began farming in Moira township and seems to have become quite prosperous. Our Edward was born on the family farm on August 31, 1855. Mary had three more sons - Thomas, Richard and Frank - between 1861 and 1867. She died shortly thereafter. The date of her death and place of burial are waiting to be re-discovered.
By 1870, Ed Sr. had remarried. Ellen Sullivan was same age as her eldest step-son. This event is rumored to have caused at least three of the boys to migrate west. It is believed that Ed Sr. died in June 1890, although proof of this has not yet been uncovered. At 16 years, our Edward decided that the wilds of Iowa (then the western boarder of the United States) was preferable to life in New York with his step mother. Edward traveled west with his brothers Tom and Will.
The authors do not know what adventures the young men had, nor how they ended up in Van Meter, Iowa, althouth the 1880 census shows Edward staying with - or perhaps working for - a Michael Scanlin. This could well be a relative of his paternal grandmother, Catherine Scanlon. The specifics of how & when Edward met his future wife, Margaret Melvina Stump is a mystery to us. We do know that Edward & Mellie were married on July 19, 1878 - ten days after Mellie's 16th birthday.
Emigrants bound for America often passed through Liverpool and then to New York. It is also possible that Ed Sr. entered the United States through Canada (which didn't keep records until the end of the 1800s). Ed Sr. became a naturalized citizen on Oct 18, 1855 in New York state. By the time of the 1860 census, Ed Sr. and his brother James were living in Moira Township, Franklin County, New York .
Ed & Mellie.
Mellie was the fifth child of Jacob Stump & Mary Troxel, born in Dallas Co. IA on 9 July 1862. Jacob & his wife came to Iowa in 1853 from Indiana. It is possible that he was related to the (accepted) earliest settlers of Van Meter township, Daniel & Lewis Stump. Jacob bought land fromt he government and began farming, prospering as he did so.
