Getting From There to Here

Do you have any documents showing our  immigration from Ireland?

I have not found any official documents showing immigration from Ireland.  We're not quite sure of where they immigrated to.  It turns out that while England was trying to eradicate the Irish in Ireland, they also had a huge, mostly unoccupied territory called Canada.  To fill it up with British citizens they would offer really cheap boat passage to Canada and cheap land, so lots of Irish people took boats to Canada, then continued on to the United States.  Some simply crossed the border, while others took boats.  Since our Cushings lived in the Boston area in the late 1840s, which is not that far from Canada, I think they probably came by land to the United States.  (From Canada.  Of course, they traveled by ship across the ocean to Canada.)  Travel across the border was not very well controlled.  There may be a ship register somewhere that shows them on their way to Canada.  There's probably no record of their entry into the United States.  There's probably a court record of Dennis' citizenship.  But I haven't found any of these documents, yet.  (Maybe someday you'll find them!)  If you like, I can send you our oldest family document, titled "Family History (exclusive of Darwin's age of monkey!)".  My dad thinks it was written either by your great grandfather, Paul, or his brother, Jerry, in about 1929.  We're guessing that he must have sat down with his father, John, and written down everything John knew about his family history.  It's about 20 pages long, but if you don't have a copy I can scan it and send it to you.