Cushing Eells (February 16, 1810 – February 16, 1893) was an American Congregational church missionary, farmer and teacher on the Pacific coast of America in what are now the states of Oregon and Washington. His first mission in Washington State was unsuccessful. Eells and his family had to leave after the Native Americans massacred a group of neighboring missionaries. They spent the next fourteen years farming and teaching in Oregon, before returning to Washington, where Eells founded a seminary that later became the Whitman College. Eells continued to teach and preach in Washington for the remainder of his life.
Early years (1810–38)
Cushing Eells was born at Blandford, Massachusetts, on February 16, 1810. His parents were Joseph Eells and Elizabeth Eells, née Warner. He attended Williams College, and graduated in 1834, then went on to the East Windsor Theological Institute (later the Hartford Seminary) in Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1837. During vacations from the seminary he taught school. While teaching in Holden he met his future wife Myra Fairbanks (born on May 26, 1805), the eldest daughter of Deacon Joshua and Sally Fairbanks.
In the spring of 1837 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions appointed Cushing and his fiancee Myra as missionaries to the Zulus in southeast Africa. They were advised to postpone their marriage until the eve of their departure. Eells was ordained as a Congregational minister on October 25, 1837. After a tribal war broke out the plans had to change. On December 5, 1837, Cushing and Myra were asked if they would be willing to go to Oregon instead, and they accepted the offer.
Tshimakain (1838–48)
On March 5, 1838, Eells married Myra Fairbanks in Massachusetts. The couple left the next day for the west coast with fellow-missionaries Elkanah and Mary Walker, William and Mary Gray, Asa Bowen Smith and his wife. On August 29, 1838, the party arrived at the winter lodge site of the Cayuse people at Waiilatpu on the Walla Walla River in what is now Washington state. The site would later be called the Whitman Mission after Dr. Marcus Whitman. The Eells and Walker families moved on to Tshimakain among the Spokanes. On September 16, 1838, Eells conducted the first Protestant service in Stevens County at Chewelah, preaching through an interpreter.
On January 11, 1840, the Eells house burned. Local Indians responded quickly to assist. When the Fort Colvile leader Archibald McDonald heard about the fire, he dispatched four men to make the house habitable. The Eellses had two sons while living at Tshimakain. Edwin Eells was born on July 27, 1841, and Myron Eells was born on October 7, 1843. Dr. Marcus Whitman was the attending physician at both births. Myra was thirty-seven years old when her first son was born. Myron Eells would become a missionary, and spent much of his life on the Skokomish Reservation, to the west of Puget Sound, where his brother Edwin was Indian Agent. Cushing and Myra Eells' mission was not successful. Myra Eells wrote in 1847, "We have been here nine years and have not yet been permitted to hear the cries of one penitent or the songs of one redeemed soul."
Willamette Valley (1848–62)
On November 29, 1847, the Whitmans and eleven other missionaries at Waiilaptu were killed in what became called the Whitman massacre. Tension had been building between the Cayuses and the growing numbers of American settlers in the area. A measles epidemic in November 1847 killed up to half the Cayuses, but only a few of the whites were affected. Some of the Cayuses blamed Whitman for the deaths of his patients, and this led to the killings, followed by the Cayuse War. Colonel Henry A. G. Lee, Oregon Volunteers called for volunteers to bring the Tshimakain missionaries to the Willamette Valley and safety. Major Joseph Magone with 60 volunteers escorted the Eells and Walker families to Oregon City on June 22, 1848.
The Eellses reached the Willamette Valley in 1848. They settled in Forest Grove, Oregon, where they stayed for the next fourteen years. In 1855 Eells was dismissed by the American Board of Home Missions. At the time he was working a donation claim and also teaching. Cushing Eells taught at different schools in the Tualatin Plains, One was the Oregon Institute which later became Willamette University. In 1849 Eells founded the Tualatin Academy, now Pacific University.
Washington (1862–93)