Cushing, Joseph, undated

Daguerreotype portrait of Joseph Cushing (1781-1852), a Baltimore bookseller and banker. A native of Hingham, Massachusetts, he learned the printer's trade in Boston, and circa 1796 he moved to Amherst, New Hampshire to work at the town's Village Messenger. When that paper folded in 1801, he established a replacement- the Farmer's Cabinet. Involved in the collapse of a local bank, he returned to Baltimore circa 1809 and became a leading bookseller and, in 1816, a banker. In 1829 he was named president of the Savings Bank of Baltimore, and served as such until 1849. He represented Baltimore in the House of Delegates in 1834, and served on the first branch of the city council of Baltimore, 1824-1827, as one of the city's first school commissioners in 1828. He was an officer of the Washington Hose Company, a volunteer fire company.

In 1804, Joseph Cushing married Rebecca Edmands (1782-1836), daughter of John Edmands of Charleston, Massachusetts. Their children were: Rebecca Ann (died in infancy); Joseph (1806-1879) married Ann MacKenzie; John (1808-1890) married Frances Cromwell; David (1811-1875) married Catherine Jane McClellan; Rebecca Ann (1814-1881) married John Wiley Edmands; Mary (-1840) married Erastus Egerton; Elizabeth (1818-1848) married George Sloan; and Sarah (1820-1886) married William H. Calwell.