The Cushman Family

Ernest Samuel "Bud" Berney talks about his mother's side of the family, the Cushmans, and his memory of their ranch. (4 minutes)

BERNEY: Well, my grandfather, J.J. Cushman, was probably the second settler here in the valley and came here in 1861. He was descended from Robert Cushman of the Mayflower Company, you know, the Pilgrims. He was the treasurer of the Pilgrim Society. He, later, after he came to the United States on the second trip of the Mayflower, married John Standish's daughter. So much for the Cushmans. My grandfather moved here and he got married and they had several children and his first wife died. He came across the United States by ox team in 1860 and he later married my grandmother, Elizabeth McCulloch. She was a school teacher and she'd come out and she was staying with friends in Virginia City when she met him.

DAVIS:  He met her out here then?

BERNEY: Yes, and they had five children, my mother [Madge] and Gertie Kendrick, Irma Allen, Pete Cushman, Frank Cushman, Bert Cushman. And they were in the ranching business.

DAVIS:  Where was their ranch?

BERNEY: Well, it's in the southern part of the valley here down by the community pasture. When he took up land here why that was a lake down there what's the community pasture now, Carson Lake. And the ranches of the old timers, the Cushmans and the Wightmans and the Downses, their property bordered on the lake and then as the lake receded they got additional land. And they also had range cattle out in the mountains too.

DAVIS:  That area would be what nowadays? Berney Road, Depp Road?

BERNEY: Well. Cushman Road runs right in front of the house. It's owned now by Pete Cushman's son-in-law, Corkill. He had, oh, I think, probably a couple thousand acres of land down there. When I was a kid they'd sold off part of it and they only had about eight or nine hundred. And that's about all. He was county commissioner at one time. In fact, when they bought the phone system here, telegraph system, the phone system, he was one of the county commissioners at the time they did it.

DAVIS:  About what time was that? [there is a cut at this point]

BERNEY: The Cushmans came here from Maine and I think they were related in some way, or associated anyway, with the Wightmans and the Allens and a lot of the early old-timers who came at that time and that's all they ever did was just ranching. They never took much part in anything except he was county commissioner. I don't too know much about him. He died before I was born. I knew my grandmother but I never met him.

DAVIS:  What are your earliest memories of your family?

BERNEY: The Cushman side of the family was going out and staying at the ranch when I was a kid and then as I got a little older I worked out there in the summers in the hayfields and grain fields, did a little buckarooin', learned to ride a horse and do all that kind of stuff.