Cushing House Museum: Caleb Cushing and the China Trade

The four-story Federal brick mansion at ninety-eight High Street in Newburyport was built around eighteen oh eight and became the home of Caleb Cushing, one of the most consequential Massachusetts politicians of the nineteenth century. Cushing served as mayor of Newburyport, congressman, Attorney General under President Franklin Pierce, justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and United States Commissioner and Minister to China. The house reflects both the Federal prosperity of maritime Newburyport and the global connections Cushing built across a long career.

Its collection includes an extensive Asian assemblage gathered from Newburyport's early trade with China, when this small Essex County port sent vessels across the Pacific and brought back porcelain, silk, and lacquerware that still fill the house's twenty-one rooms. The mansion was designated a National Historic Landmark and is now operated by the Historical Society of Old Newbury as a house museum, offering a window into the astonishing reach of a small New England seaport at its commercial peak.