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Cushing Eells (February 16, 1810 â 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 Whitman College. Eells continued to teach and preach in Washington for the remainder of his life.
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.
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."
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.
Eells became overworked with the demands of his farm, school and superintendent work. His house burned down in 1872. With his wife's support Eells resigned from his positions, sold his land and returned to the Willamette Valley. In 1872 he went to live with Edwin Eells at Skokomish, Washington, where he preached to both whites and Indians. In July 1874, Reverend Eells came back to the Chewelah area, the only one of the four missionaries to do so. The following Sunday, Eells conducted two services for the natives and two more for the white settlers at Chewelah. Eells consulted with John A. Simms, Indian agent for the area and located at Chewelah. He was pastor of the church at Skokomish from 1874 to 1876. Myra Eells died in Skokomish on August 9, 1878, at the age of seventy-three. Her son Myron Eells preached the funeral sermon.
Cushing Eells established the first Congregational Church at Chewelah in 1879 in the home of Thomas Brown (1827â1908). Eells continued to often preach to Indian groups in his later years, spent in eastern Washington. He spent his last years at the Puyallup Reservation, sometimes still working among the Indians. In 1892, a church was erected at Chewelah, although Reverend Eells was living west of the Cascade Mountains, he came and offered prayer in the new church some 54 years to the day after he first camped on the site. He gifted a bell for this church. He bought it in New York and paid for it a few days before his death.
Cushing Eells died on February 16, 1893, in Tacoma, Washington, aged 83. The historic marker beside the Chewelah church reads:
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