Cusk, James, Jr.

James Cusk was the son of Cusk (James Cusk, Sr.), a Tunxis of Farmington, Connecticut, and possibly Catherine Weummukum, a woman identified as Cusk, Sr.'s wife in 1780.  Perhaps through his mother or his own wife, Mary, Cusk had a relationship to the Wangunk in Middletown.

 

In 1761, he received his father’s property at Indian Neck in Farmington, where he took up residence.  The following year and in 1765, Cusk and fellow Tunxis Gideon Commue, David Towsey, and James Wawowos, and several other men, all associated with the Wangunk, requested the sale of that community's reservation land.  It is not clear when he joined his father at Stockbridge, Massachusetts but was there by 1780 when he and other Tunxis migrants petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly to retain their schoolmaster, Daniel Simon.

 

In that same year, Cusk was deemed to have given up his right and title to the fifty acres of land granted to his late father, and the land was granted to Deacon Peter Pohquonopeet.  Pohoquonopeet, the following year, deeded him the fifty acres that Cusk, Sr. lived on. Cusk sold his ten-acre lot on April 16, 1785.  He, his mother, and his wife sold more land later that year.  Love indicates that after the stay at Stockbridge, Cusk was one of the Tunxis who removed to Brothertown, New York, but evidence of his receiving land there has not been yet discovered.

 

Love, Samson Occom, 341.  Indian Proprietors Book, 68, 158. Stockbridge Land Records, Vol. 15: 142; Vol. 21: 28; Vol. 23: 155; Vol. 24: 229.