Christopher C. Hussey

Christopher Coffin Hussey (1820-1897) was minister of the First Parish in Billerica for twenty-eight years. He was born on Nantucket on June 19, 1820, the son of Albert Hussey, and descended from Christopher Hussey, one of the original purchasers of that island. His ancestors on both sides were Quakers, and he began his ministry among the Friends. In 1843 he married Lydia C. Coffin, also of Nantucket, a descendant of Tristram Coffin. Their children were Elizabeth Starbuck, who died in 1860 at sixteen, Dora Coffin, who married George P. Adams of Lowell in 1869, Martha Swain, and John Everett, born in 1851.

His views changed, and he became a Unitarian; Hazen records him as the first pastor of the Unitarian church at North Easton, in 1860. On October 1, 1866, he took charge of the First Parish in Billerica. Hazen, writing in 1883, credited his long ministry with improvements in several directions: in 1879 members of the society gave a fund of $10,000 whose income supported preaching that was to remain distinctively Unitarian, and in 1881 the parish bought and thoroughly repaired the former Marshall Preston house on the Boston Road as a parsonage, which served the parish's ministers until about 1965. The quarter centennial of his pastorate was observed in October 1891, and he retired in 1894 as pastor emeritus. Martha Hill Sage remembered that he made pastoral calls twice a year in every home in the parish, and more often where there was sickness or sorrow, and wrote that "he was a power for good in this community, and to his people he always gave his best."

Hussey gave much of his time to education. He served on the School Committee from 1867 to 1871 and was its chairman when it issued its reports of 1870 and 1871, and from 1874 he sat on the Massachusetts State Board of Education, which oversaw the state normal schools. He became a trustee of the Howe School in 1883 and was president of the board in 1897. His daughter Martha S. Hussey, known as Mattie, taught at the Howe School from 1875 to 1877, served on the School Committee and for many years was superintendent of the parish Sunday school. He was also a member of the committee the town appointed in 1869, with Gardner Parker, Dudley Foster and Governor Thomas Talbot, to prepare a history of Billerica, the work that became Hazen's History of Billerica in 1883, and he offered the prayer of dedication at the Soldiers' Monument on October 8, 1873.

Hussey never lost his tie to the Friends or to his island. He wrote a series of articles on Nantucket for the Quaker Friends' Intelligencer in 1886, and as a friend of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier he published "Some Personal Reminiscences of Whittier" in The Arena in 1896. He died at his home in Wellesley Hills on November 14, 1897, aged 77. His last book, Talks About Old Nantucket, a collection of island lore, tradition and legend written while his health was failing, was published by his widow, Lydia Coffin Hussey, in 1901.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 77, HUSSEY
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 269, the First Church (ministry of Mr. Hussey)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Preface (the Historical Committee of 1869)
4. Sage, Old Families of the First Parish (1898), p. 18
5. Lowell Sun, 16 November 1897, death of Rev. Christopher Coffin Hussey
6. Friends' Intelligencer and Journal, 20 November 1897, Deaths
7. Catalogue of the State Normal School at Salem (1882), Board of Education
8. Christopher Coffin Hussey, Talks About Old Nantucket (1901)