John J. Cushing was born in Providence, Rhode Island on February 14, 1822, the son Daniel Cooke Cushing (1783-1830), a merchant in Providence, and Susan Barrett Cushing (1786-1862). With a medical diploma from an unidentified medical school, he moved to San Francisco in 1853 and began practice as one of the earliest homeopathic physicians in San Francisco. He served as first president of the Pacific Homoeopathic Medical Society in 1874. In 1856 he married Harriet Reed Barlow of Burlington, Vermont, who was a school teacher in San Francisco. In 1873 he moved to Marin County about six miles from Sausalito where he homesteaded property and built a sanitorium which he named Blithedale. He died at Blithedale on September 3, 1879.
From the guide to the John J. Cushing Correspondence, 1853-1873, 1853-1857, (Historical Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library)
