Family Affair

IN THE LATE 1800S, three brothers from a rural Wisconsin family made military history. One received the coveted Thanks of Congress, and another the Medal of Honor, while a third brother went on to become a celebrated cavalry commander and Indian fighter during the Arizona Territory’s bloody Apache Wars. Of the three—William B. Cushing, Alonzo H. Cushing, and Howard B. Cushing—two paid for their success with their lives.

William Cushing is probably the best known of the trio, earning acclaim for sinking the powerful Confederate ironclad in October 1864. By the third year of the war, while Cushing was serving as a lieutenant in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, was the