Edmond Cussen

[posted 24 Mar '12; added to web site 23 Jan '14] When I first started researching our family, I could find no information on Edmond Cussen, oldest of the Dennis and Kate Cussen kids.  I thought he might have died en route to America, or was left behind in Ireland.  In the last few years, an amazing quantity of historical information has become available, either directly or through indexes of available records, and I've been able to piece together Edmond's life.  At least an outline of facts.  It's always hard to find "color", what he was like or what his interests were.  But he must have been fairly close to his brothers' families in Nebraska.  A few days ago I found a death certificate from Chicago, which I believe to be his.  Here is what I know about Edmond ...

Born in 1828 near Galbally.  Emigrated with the family in about 1841 (13 years old).  Lived with family in Stoughton, Mass. from at least 1845.  When family moved to Wisconsin in about 1847 (19 years old), he remained with younger brother William (17 years old) where they worked as boot makers in the shoe factory.  When William married in 1856, Edmond moved out but remained in Stoughton.  He was living with Maryann Barrett O'Donnell from at least 1865.  They married in 1871.  They had no children.  She passed away in 1882.  Edmund then moved out to a farm in Frontier Co., Nebraska, in an adjacent county and not far from Arapahoe where some of his brothers lived..  Because of later connections between his nephew, J. Frank Cushing, and Edmond, I'm guessing that Adam, Francis and Edmond were quite close, being the only Cushing family in the area.  In 1892, Edmond was committed to a state hospital  for the insane.  Francis had been sent to prison in 1891.  I'm wondering if Francis had been doing something to help Edmond, who may have been suffering from some dementia or something that required some assistance, and that when Francis was incarcerated Edmond could no longer live by himself and, with no local family, was put in the state hospital.  [I don't know where Adam was at this time.  Family records say he died in Kansas in 1893. And when Francis was released and moved back to Nebraska in about 1894, Edmond stayed at the state hospital, so maybe his condition was more serious.]  We know that nephew Frank asked Uncle Edmond for financial help at Notre Dame, I think after Francis died, and Edmond sent him some money.  Frank graduated in 1905 and moved to Chicago, where he married in September of 1906.  A year later, in October 1907, Edmond was released from the state hospital and, if this is his death certificate, moved to Chicago where he passed away just 2 months later.  He was buried in Calvary cemetery.