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Joseph Allen (1790-1873), the son of Phineas and Ruth Smith Allen, of Medfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1811. He then studied for the ministry and in l8l6 was called by the town of Northborough to be its third minister. It was a post he held for forty years, until he voluntarily relinquished his pulpit duties and his salary. He remained, however, engaged in church affairs as senior pastor.

Until the disestablishment of the church in Massachusetts in 1833 Allen, as the Congregationalist minister, was minister of the entire town of Northborough and chairman of the district school committee. It was a role he relished: the school children were invited to play in his extensive gardens; he arranged for young women to earn, through their handiwork, money to purchase books for a library; and he instituted a series of public lyceums.

Soon after arriving in Northborough, Joseph and his wife opened a school to earn extra income and eventually to be able to educate their own family of seven children at home. The Allen School was a Northborough institution for decades.

Joseph Allen was a beloved figure in his community. He was more widely honored by being chosen as a delegate to the Paris Peace Convention in l849 and as a representative to the Massachusetts General Court, for a four-month term in 1864. His influence in Unitarian circles was far-reaching. Within a month of his death, memorial services to him were preached from pulpits in Quincy, Illinois, and San Francisco, California.

Lucy Clark Ware Allen (1791-1866) was the daughter of Henry and Mary Clark Ware. She was their eldest surviving child and the eldest of his nineteen children. Her childhood was spent in Hingham, Massachusetts, but in l805 the family moved to Cambridge on the occasion of Henry Ware, a Unitarian luminary, being named Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard.

Proximity must have played a role in Lucy and Joseph's romance as Joseph studied with Henry Ware. In February of 1818 the couple was married and the young minister brought his bride to Northborough to a newly built house across the common from the church. They arrived from Cambridge, after dark, in a rainstorm. In later years Lucy remembered "…how pretty the village looked, when arriving at the top of the hill by Capt. Hunt's. Mr. Allen said, 'There is Northborough!' and peeping out from behind my umbrella I saw the lights in the village a short distance below and beyond."

Lucy was well qualified by temperament and experience to preside over a large family-her own plus the student boarders. Her intelligence, patience and humor enabled her to survive the occasional "…talking and racketting and thumping…" of the boys as well as the muck "…tracked through the house by our 20 pairs of feet." In addition to her regular duties, she acted as the manager and taskmaster necessary to the production of two early student newspapers-"The Meteor" and "The Nosegay", printed in 1835-1836.

During the last eight years of her life Lucy was an invalid. The effects of a stroke kept her confined to the parsonage where she was lovingly cared for by her family. Her death was lamented but also welcomed as a release from her long suffering.

Joseph and Lucy married on 3 February 1818. They had seven children: Mary Ware; Joseph Henry (1820-1898), who married Anna Minot Weld (1820-1907); Thomas Prentiss (1822-1868), who married Sarah Alexander Lord (1825-1904); Elizabeth Waterhouse (1824-1893); Lucy Clark; Edward Augustus Holyoke; and William Francis (1830-1889), who married [1] Mary Tileston Lambert (1842-1865) and [2] Margaret Loring Andrews (1839- ).

Mary Ware Allen Johnson (1819-1897), the eldest child of Joseph and Lucy Clark Ware Allen, was born in Northborough. She was educated at home and i Show more Show less

Anna Quincy Thaxter Cushing (1825-1900), the daughter of Edward Thaxter (1784-1841) and Susan Joy (Thaxter) Thaxter (1791-1837), was born on 24 October 1825 in Hingham, Massachusetts. Both Anna's family and that of her husband—Dr. Benjamin Cushing (1822-1895), son of Jerom Cushing (1780-1824) and Mary (Thaxter) Cushing (1784-1867)—were among the first settlers of the town of Hingham.

After the untimely death of her parents, Anna left Hingham to attend school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and shortly thereafter she settled in Dorchester. As the eldest child, Anna became responsible for the care of her sister, Susan Barker Thaxter (1827-1849), and her brother, Edward Thomas Thaxter (1832-1859). Susan married Henry Hunter Peters (1825-1877), in 1848, and died soon after giving birth to Edward Dyer Peters in 1849.

Anna married her cousin, Benjamin Cushing, on 5 January 1848. He had received his education in the Derby Academy (Hingham, Massachusetts), Harvard College, class of 1842, and Harvard Medical School, class of 1846. He studied in Paris for a year following graduation. Except for the period during the Civil War in which he served as a volunteer surgeon at Fortress Munroe (Hampton, Virginia), he lived and practiced in Dorchester.

Benjamin's and Anna's four children were all born in Dorchester. They were Mary Cushing (1848- ), who married Joseph Richmond Churchill (1845- ) in 1871; Edward Thaxter Cushing (1851- ); Annie Quincy Cushing (1857- ), who married her cousin, Edward Dyer Peters (1849-1917) in 1881; and Susan Thaxter Cushing (1863- ).

The First Church (Unitarian) in Dorchester, was a center of Anna's many activities. She belonged to its various sewing groups formed to aid the needy or benefit a cause and was also a member of its choir. Music was one of Anna's passions and indeed of the entire Cushing family.

Nearer home, Anna's charitable instincts benefited the young Irish women—nearly all of whom were named Mary—who came to work for her. Her kindness resulted in friendships, which in the cases of Mary Desmond, Mary Gately, and Margaret Gately, lasted for years.

Anna died in Dorchester on 13 March 1900.

This collection contains thirty-two octavo volumes which cover most of the years 1844 to 1875 and 1884 (the years in which Ben was away in the Army are notably missing). The diaries record Anna's daily activities and news of the extended Thaxter-Cushing family. Many members of this family lived in Dorchester and nearby Hingham. Though Anna had relatives living in Bolton, Deerfield, and Cambridge, they were near enough to be a vital part of Anna's life.

Anna was an intelligent, articulate, and sympathetic observer of her world. She saw herself as a homemaker, mother, and wife. When her domestic duties were completed—although she noted that the sewing was never finished—she liked to visit friends, read, sing, play the piano, and attend lectures and concerts. The diaries reveal a woman of charitable disposition, anxious to be of service to her family and community, grateful for her blessings but sometimes wishing to escape from the confines of the cult of domesticity—"Oh dear I wish I had the faculty of turning off work a little more." Despite the work, Anna seemed to be more than a little satisfied with Wednesday's spotless sugar bowls, castors and saltcellars, Friday's clean-swept house and the jars of pear preserves on the shelf.

This collection also contains two folders of correspondence to or from various members of the Thaxter-Cushing family, including early letters from Anna's mother, Susan Joy Thaxter, to her mother, Anna Thaxter; letters from Benjamin Cushing to Anna shortly before their marriage; letters of condolence regarding the deaths of Susan Joy Thaxter, Thomas Thaxter Show more Show less