Harvard memorial biographies ...

Samuel Cushman Haven.

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SAMUEL CUSHMAN HAVEN.
Second Lieutenant i62d New York Vols. (Infantry), September 20, 1862;
First Lieutenant, February, 1863; died at Baton Rouge Hospital, La., June
23, 1863, of disease contracted in the service.
SAMUEL CUSHMAN HAVEN was born at Nauvoo,
Illinois, February 19, 1843. His parents were James Henderson Haven and Elizabeth, daughter of the late Hon. Samuel
Cushman, both natives of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Through his father he was descended from the venerable Samuel Haven, D. D., for more than half a century pastor of a
church in Portsmouth, and from the Sheafe family, which for
several generations, held there a prominent position in social
and public life; while through his mother he traced a direct
line of ancestry to the Elder Cushman, so celebrated in the
early history of the Plymouth Colony. Mr. Haven's residence
in the Mormon city was very brief. He soon removed to
Quincy, Illinois, and thence to St. Louis, which was the earliest residence of which the subject of this memoir retained a
remembrance.
Cushman, - as he was always called by his family, - though
not morbidly precocious, exhibited, from the first, plain tokens
of mental quickness, activity, and vigor. His father was by
education and profession a chemist, and the son early took a
vivid interest in the father's pursuits. He recalled with entire
distinctness in after years the details of experiments and chemical processes which had been exhibited and explained to him in
his early childhood. His curiosity was thus early awakened
with reference to machinery, the applications of steam-power,
and the various industrial operations that lay within the range
of the long walks on which his father was accustomed to take
him. His friends at that period cherished high expectations
of his future, and discerned in his observing, reasoning,
thoughtful boyhood the promise, if not of surpassing eminence,
at least of substantial ability and usefulness.