August 29, 1840. Ellen Cushing was born in Kingston, MA. Cushing was first an educator who assisted freed slaves in entering post-way society. Later she went as a missionary to Burma with her husband, Josiah, where they collaborated on an English-Shan dictionary. In the late 1890s, she started the Baptist Training Institute in Philadelphia to train single women missionaries. The BTI moved to Bryn Mawr and became known as Ellen Cushing Junior College.