Collection Overview
Title: Simmons-Cushing Collection
Dates: c. 1906-1940
Creator: Charlotte Bradford Simmons
Repository: Drew Archival Library
Call Number: DAL.MSS.094
Accession Number: DAL.2016.018
Location: Fogg Archives Room
Quantity: 1 box
Language: English

Administrative Information
Access Restriction: Collection is open to researchers
Acquisition Information: Donation, Brenda Lynch via Edna Ayotte, 2016
Preferred Citation: DAL.MSS.094, Cushing-Simmons Collection, Duxbury Rural & Historical Society
Finding Aid Prepared by Caroline Vitaro (intern), 2016

Scope and Content:
The Simmons-Cushing Collection consists of three photograph albums and six individual photographs. Most of the photographs in the collection are of Duxbury scenes in and around St. George Street. There are some photographs of Onset, Plymouth, and Nantasket. Of special note are the images of the Wright Estate on St. George Street, including the garden and barns. There are also interesting photos of the Wright’s model homes on Duxbury Beach that were damaged in the Portland Gale, and three photographs of a house moved by horses. The two earlier albums (c. 1906) were most likely created by Fred E. and Juliet Simmons. Their daughter, Charlotte Bradford Simmons (b. 1910) created the later (1930s) album.

Two of the photographs in the collection that are not part of the albums show a work or logging camp in 1916. Three men, Wallace Russell, Leonard, and Hiram, are identified. The photographs were given to Wallace Russell’s “Uncle and ant.”

There is a portrait of “Jim and Aunt Becca” c. 1920 and two early 19th-century school photos, possibly of a Duxbury school.

Biographical Information:
Fred E. Simmons (1882-1964) was born in Duxbury, the son of Abbott W. Simmons, a housewright, and Nellie Lapham. He married Juliet Bradford Wright (1879-1943) in 1905. She was also born in Duxbury, the daughter of Edwin H. Wright and Sallie Bradford Delano. The couple lived on St. George Street and later Tremont Street. Fred was a carpenter.

Charlotte Bradford Simmons (1910-1999) was the only child of Fred E. Simmons and Juliet B. Wright. She married Arthur Leicester Cushing (1909-1991) in 1939 in Duxbury. Arthur L. Cushing was born in Newton, MA, but by 1920, his family had relocated to Duxbury, where his father was a carpenter. After their marriage, Arthur and Charlotte Cushing moved to the New Bedford/Fairhaven area on the south coast of Massachusetts. Their daughter, Edna Ayotte, was living in Rochester, MA at the time the collection was donated.