Anna Cushing Fearing

Anna Cushing was born on the 3rd of November, 1791, on Main Street in South Hingham, the daughter of Robert Cushing, whom the 1893 History of Hingham records as a farmer “and deacon of the church,” and Judith Loring. The genealogy places the family at the South Hingham end of Main Street, the road known as Liberty Plain, the same stretch this cemetery faces.

On the 6th of February, 1811, she married Ezekiel Fearing, a blacksmith whose forge stood along that same road. The match joined two families already rooted in the village. The genealogy is plain about the shape of Anna’s life: a deacon’s daughter who married a tradesman and raised a household within sight of where she was born.

Of her seven children, four daughters married into the Whiting family of Liberty Plain. The 1893 History records that Anna Cushing (born 1812) married Charles Whiton, recorded as a maker of edge-tools; Sarah Gilkey (born 1814) married Albert Whiton, set down in his own entry as a “Master-mason, contractor, and builder”; Olive Cushing (born 1819) married Benjamin S. Whiton; and Hannah Lincoln (born 1825) married Amasa Whiton. Charles and Albert were brothers; Amasa was their first cousin. Two more daughters carried other names, Mary Adams marrying Isaiah G. Tower and Deborah Jacob marrying Justin Ripley, Jr. The youngest child, Henrietta, born in 1831, died on the 1st of September, 1834, in her fourth year.

Anna outlived her husband by thirteen years. He died in 1865; she died on the 18th of December, 1878, in her eighty-eighth year. The record names no public office or enterprise for her. She stands instead at the quiet center of a knot of marriages, the deacon’s daughter through whose household the Cushing, Fearing, and Whiton families of one Main Street road became kin.

Family as recorded on Find a Grave

Robert Cushing1756–1825also hereJudith Loring Cushing1764–1847also here

Anna Cushing Fearingm.Ezekiel Fearing1787–1865✓also here

Sarah Gilkey Fearing Whiting1814–1894also hereMary Adams Fearing Tower1817–1838also hereOlive Cushing Fearing Whiting1819–1850also hereHannah Lincoln Fearing Whiting1825–1910also here

SiblingsJudith Cushing Fearing1786–1869 · Deborah Cushing Gilkey1787–1865 · Pyam Cushing1789–1865 · Hannah Lincoln Cushing Shute1794–1875 · Permela Cushing1796–1876

Relationships are as recorded on Find a Grave. A ✓ marks a tie the 1893 History of Hingham independently confirms.