Early Years.

William Cushing was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, on 1 March 1732, the son of John and Mary Cushing. Both his father and grandfather were superior court judges and members of the governor's council. He attended a Latin school in Scituate and then Harvard College, graduating in 1751. He taught school for a year and considered preparing for the ministry, but in 1754 he began to study law as an apprentice in the office of Jeremiah Gridley. Admitted to practice in 1755, he practiced law in Scituate for five years and then moved to the district of Maine (still part of the province of Massachusetts Bay) as the lawyer for the Kennebec Proprietors, a land-development company. He was admitted as a barrister in 1762.

Provincial Judge.

Cushing practiced law in Maine for eleven years, also sitting as a justice of the peace and a probate court judge. In 1772, when...