You were born here. You always thought you'd bring your family and your business back here - someday. You never thought you'd spend your whole life somewhere else. It was just going to be for a year or two after college. Why not do it now? Why not move back? If you are a business owner or manager, your gateway to New England is Cummings Center in Beverly, MA. It is a gleaming new building, like a phoenix rising up from the famous and venerable old shoe machinery factory. Though the exterior integrity of one of America's most architecturally significant buildings was maintained, the workers of yore would never recognize the metamorphosis inside. It is so appealing, in fact, that businesses have signed leases in record numbers - in record time. Space is going fast. More than 2,000 brand new jobs have been created. Cummings Center already produces a combined payroll of more than $200 million annually. Click to enlarge Since its April 28, 1996 opening, 393 businesses have signed on with more than 1.6 million square feet of MA office, executive office, laboratory and research space already leased. And Cummings Properties customizes every tenant's space to its exact specifications. Many Cummings Center firms do business with each other, as well as with the public. All tenant firms benefit from every possible amenity, without ever leaving Cummings Center - from childcare, to dry cleaning, to tax services, to banks, to restaurants, to the state-of-the-art North Shore Athletic Club. For more information, click here for Cummings Center tenant comments and website links. You'll like what you see. Cummings Center. Success works here. You should too! Call Steve Drohosky at 978-922-9000

James L. McKeown School City of Beverly pays tribute to former CPF managing trustee Following unanimous approval by the Beverly City Council, the Beverly School Committee voted in November 1997 to name the city’s new elementary school at Cummings Center the James L. McKeown Elementary School in honor of Cummings Properties’ late president and CPF’s former managing trustee. Mr. McKeown was instrumental in introducing Cummings Properties to Beverly in December 1994. He led the company’s negotiations for and subsequent purchase of the former United Shoe Machinery Corporation's headquarters from The Black & Decker Corporation. Four days before he died of a sudden heart attack in November 1996, Mr. McKeown met with Beverly officials and arranged for Cummings Properties to donate most of the 6.5 acres of land needed for the new school. Later, Beverly’s then-Mayor William Scanlon proposed the McKeown name and the city adopted it. In September 1998, Beverly dedicated its new James L. McKeown Elementary School at the northwest corner of the complex. Elsewhere on the Cummings Center campus Beverly has appropriated funding to design a new police headquarters, to be built in 2007 on land also donated by the Company at the southeast corner of Cummings Center. Currently, Cummings Properties Foundation's primary charitable focus is the McKeown Scholars Program, named after James L. McKeown. The program awards 20 merit scholarships of $5,000 each year to high school students in communities where Cummings Properties operates, including Beverly. In addition to these $5,000 scholarships, the McKeown Scholars Program created a special $10,000 award to specifically benefit 10 Beverly High School graduates each year, who completed their elementary school education at McKeown Elementary School (or its predecessor the McKay School). The McKeown School Award is shared by the top 10 ranked Beverly High seniors who are alumni of the McKeown School. Additional, similar awards totalling another $60,000 annually are allocated each year to graduates of seven other elementary schools in Beverly, Marlborough, Medford, Somerville and Woburn. Since its establishment, the program has already distributed more than $1 million in scholarships. For more information about Mr. McKeown and his tenure as president of Cummings Properties, or more about McKeown Scholars Program, click on Cummings Foundation. For information on the major new Interstate 93 highway interchange named in Mr. McKeown’s honor in his home town of Woburn, Massachusetts, click here on “New bridges will honor late Cummings Properties president.” Also see Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 92 of the Acts of 1999, which was signed by Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci on October 1, 1999.

Beverly by the numbers (2000 Census)

Population: 39,862

Age demographic:

Ages 15-44: 18,417 (43.1 percent of the population)

Ages 45-64: 7,141 (22.8 percent of the population)

Household demographics:

Married couples: 7,890 (50.1 percent of the population)

Female head of family: 1,534 (9.7 percent of the population)

Income distribution (from the 1990 Census as the 2000 numbers are presently unpublished):

$35,000 to $49,999: 2,812 (19.0 percent)

$50,000 to $74,999: 3,134 (21.2 percent)

$75,000 to $99,000: 1,280 (8.7 percent)

Geography:

Total area: 22.75 square miles

Land area: 15.44 square miles

Density: 2,582 persons per square mile

Climate:

Normal January temperature: 25.8°F

Normal July temperature: 71.6°F

Normal annual precipitation: 43.6''

Cummings Family - Early history on the North Shore

The history of the Cummings family on the North Shore goes back to the very earliest Colonial days in this area. Isaac (Comins) Cummings landed here in 1638 and settled in the part of Ipswich that is now Topsfield, Massachusetts.

Isaac was the (eight times) great grandfather of Cummings Center's founder, Bill Cummings. His life and that of many of his North Shore descendants is well documented in the 1903 book, "The CUMMINGS MEMORIAL, A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Isaac Cummings, an Early Settler of Topsfield, Massachusetts," by Reverend George Mooar. Isaac was a deacon of the church, a constable, and in 1676, moderator of the Ipswich Town Meeting.

Bill Cummings was a descendant of Isaac Cummings on the line: Isaac, Isaac, John, Samuel, Richard, Philip, Ambrose, Erastus, Augustus and Augustus Cummings. The second Isaac was born about 1633, based on court testimonies that he was 60 years in 1692 and 63 years in 1696. He married Mary Andrews of Rowley Village (Boxford) on November 27, 1659. Born in Rowley Village on June 7, 1666, John Cummings was the fifth of their 10 children, and he married Susanna Town in Topsfield on December 24, 1688.

John and Mary's son, Samuel, was born February 14 in 1708 or 1709, and married Susanna Hood in Middleton. They became early residents in the part of Stoughton, MA now known as Sharon, where Samuel died on December 11, 1704. Samuel and Susanna's 10th of 12 children, Richard, was born February 19, 1750, and married Jemina (Smith) Robbins of Walpole, MA in 1774, but soon moved to Sterlington (Union) Maine, where they built the second house there, the same year. (See "COME SPRING," an early history of Union, Maine.)

Richard and Jemina's son Philip married Hannah Grafton and died in Waldoboro, Maine in 1867. They had eight children including Ambrose, their firstborn. On September 21, 1833, Ambrose married Mary Ann Nash of Waldoboro, Maine, where he died in 1873. Their firstborn of 10 children was Erastus Grafton Cummings, who was born March 14, 1834 and died in 1929.

Erastus married Almire Knowlton in Monroe, Maine on April 9, 1860, and enlisted in the Union Army on August 29, 1862. Their firstborn of five children was Augustus William Cummings, who was born in Waldo (Smallville), Maine in 1862.

Augustus married Nettie Marie Barstow in Somerville, MA on October 30, 1891. She was a native of Nobleboro, Maine, the daughter of George Barstow and Sarah York. Their fourth of five children was Augustus W. Cummings, Jr., who was born on January 24, 1899. Augustus Jr. married Dorothy Purington, who was born in Sunapee, New Hampshire on May 1, 1906, and they begot Bill Cummings, who was born in Somerville, MA on March 11, 1937.

Extensive information about the Cummings Geneology is available through the family website, www.IsaacCummingsFamily.org.

North Shore Chamber of Commerce

The largest and most influential business organization North of Boston, the North Shore Chamber serves as the business community's voice on major legislative issues, while promoting economic growth and an improved quality of life for the region. Monthly programs, educational training seminars, and researched positions on public policy are just some of the many tangible ways that the Chamber is constantly seeking to provide practical solutions to the issues and concerns facing the region.

Consider joining our many area members shown below as part of the Beverly Chamber. Membership investment is modest and the return is substantial.

For more details about what makes living and working on the North Shore so exceptional, please call or write to:

North Shore Chamber of Commerce, Inc.
Cherry Hill Drive, Suite #100
Danvers, MA 01923-4395
(978) 774-8565
E-mail: info@northshorechamber.org