Robert Cushman

For other people named Robert Cushman, see Robert Cushman (disambiguation).

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)

Robert Cushman (1578 – 1625) was one of the Pilgrims. He was born in the village of Rolvenden in Kent, England, and was baptized in the parish church there on February 9, 1577/78. He spent part of his early life in Canterbury on Sun Street. Cushman married Sarah Reder on 31 July 1606. He was excommunicated for not that the Mayflower was hired in Canterbury.

He did not complete the initial trip to the New World with the other Pilgrims on board the Mayflower, as the ship he was traveling on, the Speedwell, developed leaks and had to return to England. He instead took a different ship to the New World.

Cushman sailed to Plymouth, Massachusetts in the fall of 1621 aboard the Fortune, but returned shortly thereafter to England to promote the colony's interests. There, he published an essay concerning the Lawfulness of Plantations, which was appended to Mourt's Relation. This document is of interest to modern scholars because of its treatment of the economic reasons for emigration.

Unfortunately, before he could return to the New World, he succumbed to an outbreak of plague in London, in the spring of 1625; as a result, the site of his grave is unknown. The book Saints and Strangers by George F. Willison recounts his story.

His son, Thomas Cushman (ca. 1607/08 - 1691), who accompanied him on the Fortune, was raised in the family of Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford (1590-1657), and served as Ruling Elder of the Plymouth church from 1649, until his death in 1691. He was buried on New Plymouth Hill. Thomas married Mary Allerton who died in 1699. She was the last survivor of the original Mayflower passengers.

Through his great-great-grand-daughter, Elizabeth Cushman (1739–1809), who married Ephraim Delano, Robert Cushman was an ancestor of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Also many other families have spawned from the Cushman name the one most close to the Cushman bloodlne is the Read family. John Read married Elizabeth Cusham in some year in the 1600's John Read was a Shoemakers aprentice so from marrying her he had stumbled into some wealth.