page_title: Cushing Eells
section_title: Washington (1862–93)
hierarchical_section_title: Cushing Eells / Washington (1862–93)
caption_attribution_description: English: Eells family portrait, 1888, Puyallup. Men are Edwin Eells (left), Cushing Eells (center) and Myron Eells (right).
context_page_description: Cushing Eells 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 the Whitman College.
  Eells continued to teach and preach in Washington for the remainder of his life.
context_section_description: The government reopened the northern region to settlement in 1859. 
  In 1860 Cushing Eells acquired the mission claim area at Waiilatpu.
  He settled there with his family in 1862.
  Due to what he called a religious experience he decided to build a school on the site in memory of the Whitmans.
  The school was more than 7 miles (11 km) from the new town of  Walla Walla , and did not attract pupils.
  Eells bought land nearer to the town, where he started the Whitman Seminary.
  The first building was dedicated on October 13, 1866 on the site now occupied by the Whitman Conservatory of Music.
  The seminary opened on September 14, 1866 with Eells as the first principal.
  Eells was also appointed superintendent of schools for Walla Walla County.  
  He devoted much effort in the years that followed to founding Congregational churches and schools in Washington Territory and raising money for the seminary.
  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 (1827–1908).
  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:
  Dedicated to the memory of the Rev. Cushing Eells, pioneer missionary who preached his first sermon in the territory of Washington [still Oregon Territory at that time] in Chewelah, Sunday, September 16, 1838. The bell in this tower was donated by the Rev. Mr. Eells to the First Congregational Church of Chewelah, arriving February 11, 1893, the day of his death.
caption: Eells family portrait, Puyallup (1888). Men are Edwin Eells (left), Cushing Eells (center) and Myron Eells (right).
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