A Tale of Two Women
The museum holds a wealth of paintings, many of them portraits of prominent Newburyporters. Two such portraits portray elegant and genteel women -- one from the 18th century and one from the 19th century. At first glance, it would seem that they have little in common, but Mary Dudley Atkins and Margaret Woodbridge Cushing share a common thread in colonial New England.
Hanging in the garden-side hall at the Cushing House is an oversized portrait (c. 1750) of
Mary Dudley Wainwright Atkins (1692-1774)
, attributed to American artist John Greenwood. As the house is interpreted to visitors, her portrait is most often looked at in context with that of the companion portrait of her husband Captain Joseph Atkins, one of Newburyport's most influential and affluent merchants.
Mary Atkins has a fascinating story in her own right. She was the daughter of Rebecca Tyng and Joseph Dudley, Colonial Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1702-1715. Her grandfather Thomas Dudley (1576-1653) was the second colonial governor about whom much has been written, but that's a story for another day.
Mary Atkins, the last of thirteen children, first married Francis Wainwright of Boston in 1713 and had three children by him. After he died in 1722, she married Joseph Atkins in 1730 with whom she had one son, Dudley Atkins. The home at 9 Strong Street still stands today. When Joseph died in 1773, he left his widow one half of his "mansion house." Mary died the following year having outlived all of her children. Her gravestone in St. Paul's churchyard describes her as "virtuous and amiable."
Moving into the front parlor of the Cushing House, a large portrait of
Margaret Cushing (1855-1955)
presides over the room. It was painted by society artist Cecelia Beaux (1855-1942) in 1913 at Beaux's studio and home, Green Alley, on Eastern Point in Gloucester. During the fall of that year, Miss Cushing traveled to Gloucester for twenty-seven sittings
,
and Beaux created what biographer Tara Leigh Tappart says "is a portrait of Cushing that displayed her well-bred gentility. The portrayal is one that well represents the artist's ideal of 'fine ladyship' -- a quality 'not bought but lived'."
Margaret Cushing never married and spent much of her life in Newburyport, but she served as a hostess to her Uncle Caleb Cushing, managing his social affairs and accompanying him to Switzerland when he went to the Geneva Tribunal in 1872. Margaret Cushing made a mark in her community through her support and promotion of local history. She was well educated and an ardent preservationist becoming a member of the esteemed National Society of the Colonial Dames of America only a few years after it was founded in 1891.
Here lies the key to the common thread between Mary Atkins and Margaret Cushing. In recently turning up a yearbook of Colonial Dames members, Cushing was listed as having directly descended from 37 colonial ancestors (many from Newbury and Newburyport), but leading the list is Governor Thomas Dudley, her sixth great grandfather, and grandfather of Mary Dudley Atkins.
An art critic and contemporary of Margaret Cushing stated that her portrait "captured her well-bred New England gentility, as well as her family pride...that finely documented [her] life." The same could be said for Mary Dudley Atkins.
