Rev. Edward Cummings

Born in Colebrook, New Hampshire to Edward Norris Cummings and Lucretia Frances Merrill Cummings. Edward studied both religion and sociology at Harvard, and in 1887 received a Harvard fellowship to study labor relations Europe. In 1891, he became an instructor of sociology at Harvard, rising to assistant professor in 1893, and in Oct. 1900 he was installed as Edward Everett Hale's successor at South Congregational Church (Unitarian). Cummings sat on the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Penal Aspects of Drunkenness; served as a director of the Massachusetts Prison Assoc., the Watch and Ward Society, the Industrial Aid Society, Boston Associated Charities, Massachusetts Prison Assoc., and the Hale House Social Settlement; as vice-president of the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches; as president of the Massachusetts Assoc. for Promoting the Interests of the Adult Blind and the Massachusetts Civic League; and as chairman of the Theodore Parker Memorial and the Russian Famine Relief Committee of Boston. Cummings became a trustee of the World Peace Foundation in 1910, and in 1916 he became its General Secretary. Cummings married Rebecca Haswell Clarke in June 1891, and their children were Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962) and Elizabeth Frances Cummings (Qualey) (1902-1980). The family lived in Cambridge, Mass. and at Joy Farm in Silver Lake, New Hampshire.

Killed in a car-train collision during a blizzard in New Hampshire