Part 2

At that time there was no obstruction to the free flowage of Bark River from Nagawicka to the upper Nemahbin, two miles to the westward. The site of the log cabin chosen by Dr. Cushing is about half way between those lakes, and only a few rods north of the river. It may still be recognized by travellers on the interurban trolley, by means of two beautiful elm trees across the river, from a point half a mile west of the trolley station at Delafield. Less than a mile farther north, are the buildings of the Nashotah Theological Seminary, some of which are also visible from the electric road. Then, however, oak openings extended north and south without visible termination. It was an ideal place for rest from the busy employments of the world, and Mrs. Cushing long afterwards said that her sojourn there was the happiest period of her life.

Almost immediately, Dr. Cushing took a prominent place in this community. Appointed justice of the peace, he made the first entries in his docket February 15, 1840, in a case tried before him, between G. S. Hosmer, plaintiff, and Russell Frisby, defendant. What is now the township of Delafield was then the south half of the town of Warren, but it was the next winter set off by an act of the legislature under the name of Nemahbin, and Dr. Cushing was placed at the head of the new municipal organization as chairman of its first board of supervisors. The town meeting at which he was elected was held January 5, 1842, at the schoolhouse; and over it presided George Paddock, whom we have already noted as guiding his daughter to this locality.

More than two years before, on December 28, 1839, a second son had been born to Mrs. Cushing and her husband, and named Walter. The date of the death of this child is not preserved, but he could not have outlived very early childhood, since the burial place was on the farm from which the parents removed within the next five years.

Alonzo was also born on the Delafield farm, as shown by a family Bible lately brought to light. Until this discovery his birth had been credited to Milwaukee, like that of his elder brother, Howard. He was born on January 19, 1841.

Neither store nor post office had yet been established in the little hamlet, nor was either of those conveniences to be found there for more than two years afterward. The original Hawks's tavern was built and opened to the public in 1840, and was deemed a great blessing by immigrants on their way westward along the lately-cleared Territorial Road; but there were no table supplies to be found on sale nearer than Prairieville (now Waukesha), a dozen miles back towards Milwaukee.

The year 1842 was an eventful one for the frontier township of Nemahbin, since in the early part of the summer, a milldam was built at the outlet of Nagawicka Lake, while not long after a gentleman named Delafield arrived there, purchased the water power and its improvements, and erected a flouring mill where the village mill has ever since been a conspicuous figure in the landscape. But of far greater importance was the birth, in the cabin north of the river of which we have already spoken, on November 4, of that later glory of the American navy, William Barker Cushing.

As Dr. Cushing's first wife died in 1833, it follows that the youngest of her children could not have been at this time less than nine years old. Although nothing is told of the date of the former marriage in any writings accessible to me, it seems likely that the eldest of the children of that connection may have been born as early as 1825, and therefore may have become fairly well qualified to take charge of the household during any temporary incapacity on the part of Mrs. Cushing herself.

Mrs. Edwards states in her life of the naval commander[3] that there were four children of Dr. Cushing's first marriage, but gives the names of only three of them, who were all members of the family in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee County records show the purchase, in 1844, by Mrs. Cushing from Dr. Castleman, to whom the farm had then been sold, of a burial lot, 6 feet by 4, including a grave, undoubtedly that of her third son, Walter; and William was the youngest of her sons and the youngest of the family except a daughter, born in Chicago and still living there--Mrs. Isabel Cushing Bouton. In Mrs. Edwards' volume, however, Mrs. Cushing is credited with being the mother of seven, though she names only five. The last conveyance by Dr. Cushing himself appearing in the register's office at Waukesha, is a deed to Dr. Castleman of part of his holdings, dated April 13, 1843. It may be pretty safely assumed that he became aware at about that time of the inroads of a disease in his own system which some four years later proved fatal.

[3] Edwards, _op. cit._, p. 15.

_Removal to Chicago_

In 1844, then, it is probable that the wife and mother left the little town that she had learned to love so well, and wended her way to Chicago with her own children and those of her husband's former marriage. It is said that she had suggested the name of Delafield for the township, because the Nemahbin lakes were not within its boundaries. The change in designation was made by the legislature in 1843. During all the time of the residence of the family here, they lived in Milwaukee County, in the Territory of Wisconsin. Waukesha County had not yet been accorded a separate civic organization, and Wisconsin did not become a state until 1848. Mrs. Cushing's choice for the name of the place was stated by her to have been influenced by what she considered the more euphonious sound of the name adopted, when compared with the family name that was to be immortalized and made resplendent by her three sons born in Wisconsin. It is a pity that the town had not been called Cushing, for Mr. Delafield died soon afterwards, and the mill property was sold with the rest of the estate of the deceased in 1846, since which date there has been nothing of an historical character to remind one of the origin of the local name.

There is no available information of the events of the three years ending with 1847 and relating to the Cushing family in Chicago--a town not then as satisfactory from an aesthetic view-point as the Milwaukee they had left in 1839. Perhaps an exception should be made to this statement of lack of information, in favor of an anecdote told by Mrs. Edwards of the young William walking off into Lake Michigan, and informing his rescuer that his name was "Bill Coon," so that he could not be immediately identified. He consequently was lost to his family for the succeeding thirty-six hours. It is also mentioned incidentally that Dr. Cushing resumed the practice of medicine at Chicago, but he could hardly have attained much success in it, on account of his declining health. Early in 1847 he returned to Ohio, perhaps arranging there for the future of the two sons by his first marriage, one of whom became a lawyer and partner of Salmon P. Chase, and the other a physician; but both died several years before the outbreak of the war.

_The Mother in Charge of the Family_

Dr. Cushing himself died at Gallipolis, Ohio, on April 22, 1847. He must have been a man of considerable force of character, and of great personal attractiveness, as well as of correct conceptions of right and wrong, with sympathies always for the right side of public questions. His physical constitution was not robust, however, and he therefore passed away without leaving any memory of important action of his own, and without provision for his widow and her children.

It is at this point that Mrs. Cushing's personality becomes more distinctly visible to the investigator of the family annals. Having to lay out a course of life with particular reference to the welfare of her little ones, she wisely decided, like Ruth in the ancient story, to go back to the home of her husband's relatives, and there to begin life anew. She loved her independence and had no intention of quartering herself upon the charity of those well-disposed people; but it was reasonable to hope that they, or some of them, would take sufficient interest in the boys, at any rate, to point out ways and means for their development into good citizens, and opportunities of which they might take advantage to win places of honor and usefulness among their fellow men.

She was very soon enabled to establish a school for children at Fredonia, by means of which, with the practice of strict economy, she maintained her family in a respectable manner. The indulgence of social vanities was of course not within the scope of her plans. Her boys were required to help in the support of the family by the performance of such slight tasks as the neighbors called upon them to accomplish--driving cows to pasture, and other "chores" of a similar character. All moneys earned by this work were handed over to the mother and employed to the common advantage of the family. Mrs. Bouton, of Chicago, the youngest of the children, and the only one now surviving, writes this, of her early life at home:

One trait, I think, was very remarkable in our family--the respect and courtesy manifested toward each other. I never received a reproof or heard an impatient word from either of my brothers. They always displayed toward each other and my mother and myself, the same courtesy they would show to a commanding officer. The petting and love I received was enough to have spoiled me for life for contact with the world.

In the case of William, at least, the spirit of courtesy would not appear to have been so overwhelming as to prevent an occasional exuberance of spirits, an instance of which is told of in a letter from Mrs. Julia G. Horton of Buffalo, cited by Mrs. Edwards as follows:[4]

[4] _Ibid_, p. 38.

Will was never happier than when playing some joke upon one of his elder brothers. One summer evening I accompanied his brother Alonzo (Allie, as we used to call him) "to the mill-pond," upon his invitation to take a row in a forlorn old scow which was much patronized by the young people for what they considered delightful trips over the smooth pond. When we reached the bank we found that some one had untied the boat and set it adrift. No other boat was to be had and so we sat down on a log, wondering if some one had tricked us out of our row. Soon we heard a wild whoop in the distance and saw Master Will waving an oar and shouting to us: "Next time you want to row, don't forget to ask your friends."

Mrs. Horton also tells an anecdote of how the future commander followed her and one of his brothers to a prayer-meeting, seating himself behind them and singing improvised personalities instead of the approved words of the hymns that were being sung by the worshippers, so that he was discovered by a church official and led out of the congregation in disgrace. There are other like narratives surviving among the relatives and acquaintances of the Cushings, but none of them throw additional light upon the young men in whom we are at this time most interested. With Milton, the eldest, tradition has not seemed to busy itself. He was not a native of Wisconsin; and it may be enough to say here that in due time he became a paymaster in the Union navy, receiving promotion, until he was retired for disability, as paymaster of the fleet then in the Mediterranean, and died January 1, 1886. He married, but left no issue.

Of the younger lads, Howard appears to have been endowed with an unusual aspiration for independence of action, so that at fourteen years of age he took the position of "devil" in the office of _The Censor_, in his home village of Fredonia. As soon as he had obtained enough of the technique of the trade to imagine himself able to hold his own among strangers, he went to Boston, where flourished the aristocratic relatives of his mother. Here he continued his labors at the press and in the composing room until affected with some illness that made him homesick as well, upon which he returned to Fredonia to recover under his mother's ministrations. When that result was attained he started for Chicago, memories of which progressive town doubtless had haunted him all through his sojourn in the East.

He had left Chicago before he was ten years old. The Cushing traits of character were shared by him in such measure, however, as to make it reasonably certain that he was remembered affectionately by former acquaintances, and the road towards independence was doubtless made as easy for him as it could be made with a youth whose dread of being under personal obligations to his friends was in any instance hard to overcome. A situation as typesetter was given him in the office of _The Farmer's Advocate_, and in that capacity and place he worked until his enlistment in 1862 as a private soldier in an Illinois volunteer artillery regiment.

_All the Boys Established_

In the meantime, Alonzo was bravely attending to such home duties as would be valuable in lightening his mother's work.

In 1855 her brother-in-law, Francis S. Edwards, took his seat as member of Congress from the Thirty-fourth New York district, and the next year procured the appointment of William as a page on the floor of the House.

Towards the end of the session he also secured the appointment of Alonzo as a cadet at West Point, where he entered in 1857, in the seventeenth year of his age, being described in the Academy records as 5 feet and 5 inches tall.

William was then fourteen, and a favorite among the congressmen with whom he came into touch. He also attracted the notice of a relative, Commodore Joseph Smith of the Navy, afterwards admiral, who took measures to have the boy entered as a cadet at the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Milton was employed in a pharmacy at Fitchburg, Mass., where he remained until the outbreak of the war.

Mrs. Cushing henceforth had only herself and her young daughter to provide for. She had fought a good fight, and had succeeded in the establishment of all her sons in positions in which they were tolerably well assured of a good equipment for life work, in which the ordinary young American of that era only needed a sound mind in a sound body and a fair field, with no favor, in order to accomplish something worth while, whether in war or in peace.

But it should be here noted, that the all-important feature of personal character was and is requisite in the making of an American whose existence is to be of advantage to his country. In such a republic as ours, the nation would surely fail of long endurance if a considerable proportion of its citizens did not hold the national welfare as something higher and more sacred than that of their own individual personality, and could not be found able and willing when the emergency should arise, to give their best efforts, even at the imminent peril of life and limb, to the advancement of the common welfare. It was the prevalence of such elements of character among great numbers of our citizens that carried us through the stress of the Civil War in a manner that left us afterwards stronger and more respected by the whole world than before its beginning, and which now bids fair to place us beyond dispute at the head of all the nations of the earth. In the building up of character of this kind, women were most potent, and among American women Mary Cushing stands in this respect in the very front rank. This was evidenced by her furnishing to the country in its day of need at least three youthful sons so equipped in intellect, nerve, and unflinching will as to be among the most serviceable of all the soldiers and sailors of the Union army and navy.

The four years following the entrance of Alonzo and William to the military and naval academies respectively, were devoid of any incidents of absorbing interest in the lives of the young Cushings. At West Point, Alonzo was approved by his superiors and beloved by his fellows. Modest in demeanor, but always efficient in his work, and kindly towards under-classmen, General Morris Schaff's "Spirit of Old West Point"[5] shows the esteem in which he was held by all. He was graduated June 24, 1861, and on the same day commissioned second lieutenant in the Fourth Artillery, being promoted to first lieutenant before leaving the hall.

[5] _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1907.

William's cadet experience was somewhat more eventful, for the reason that the spirit of mischief was more dominant with him at that time than with his brothers. The culmination of his pranks was reached towards the close of the winter of 1861, when he fixed a bucket of water at the top of the doorway through which his teacher of Spanish was to pass on his way to an evening party. The teacher was deluged, but the youngster was given permission to resign his cadetship, which he did on March 23. This release was necessary for the sake of discipline, but it was evidently not the intention of the officers to allow him to pass permanently out of the navy. In a month after his enforced resignation he was acting master's mate on board the frigate "Minnesota," from which he wrote a letter dated May 7, 1861, to his cousin, Miss Mary B. Edwards, at East Troy, Wisconsin, that may serve to indicate his feeling as to his chosen profession at the beginning of its really serious work. He says:

I can write but a few hasty lines. I am an officer on board of the splendid steam frigate, Minnesota. We have just left our moorings, and as I write, we are moving under steam and sail, out of Boston harbor. I am going to fight under the old banner of freedom. I may never return, but if I die it shall be under the folds of the flag that sheltered my infancy, and while striking a blow for its honor and my own. * * * Wherever there is fighting, there we will be, and where there is danger in the battle, there will I be, for I will gain a name in this war. I must now say, Good-by; God bless you, Mary. I will write you from homeward bound vessels as often as possible.

The young lady to whom this and many other letters were written by William B. Cushing, during his stay at Annapolis and subsequently, was a daughter of the congressman who took the boy to Washington in the first instance, and it is likely that the two young people were on terms of familiar acquaintance with each other while they were at the capital. He writes to her as though she were his confidential friend as well as his cousin. Seven weeks after sending the foregoing he wrote again from the "Colorado," that he had

been to the North twice in command of valuable prize ships captured from the enemy. I am now on my return trip from one of these expeditions. One of my prizes was worth seventy-five thousand dollars, while the last was nearly double in value to that. I have gained considerable honor by taking them safely to New York and Philadelphia, and I expect promotion before long.

His expectation proved well grounded, although in a boy of eighteen it may have seemed rather extravagant. Before completing his twentieth year, as will appear later, he had the unique distinction (for one of his age) of being given absolute command of one of the Union gunboats. But that story will properly wait.

_The Beginning of the War_

From another account it seems that one of the prizes, "The Delaware Farmer," was taken in by Cushing himself, and was the first taken in the war by anybody. During most of July the young sailor was on duty with the blockading squadron off the coast of the Carolinas. In August he was once more on the waters of the Chesapeake, engaged in storming a land battery and destroying some small supporting vessels at the same place. In the meantime, Alonzo was just as rapidly obtaining distinction. From West Point he had proceeded without delay to Washington, and on reaching the capital had applied himself most assiduously to the work most necessary at that time to be performed. When the writer of this sketch arrived at Washington as a member of a volunteer regiment early in July, 1861, Alonzo's smooth, swarthy face and supple figure were to be seen wherever there was a volunteer battery in need of instruction and drill. Although he worked his pupils hard, they all loved him for his radiant smiles and frequent infectious laughter, which were potent factors in smoothing the grim front of grizzled war.

He was then only in his twenty-first year and looked still younger. Standing 5 ft. 9 in. in his stockings, his length of limb was such as to give him the appearance, when on horseback, of being under middle height. His good nature was so unusual on the part of young regular officers, that it captivated every volunteer with whom he came in contact. On July 18 he was at the front in the battle, or rather reconnaissance, at Blackburn's Ford, near the stone bridge over Bull Run, and three days later was in the thick of the disastrous fight on the farther side of that stream. His conduct on that occasion was said to have been admirable, but his position was not yet sufficiently advanced to secure him mention in the reports of general officers, such as became a mere matter of course as soon as he fought on his own responsibility, whether in command of his battery or detached for important staff duty at corps and grand division headquarters.

In no instance is there record of failure on his part to meet the utmost expectations of his superior officers, while generally he exceeded those expectations by a great margin. Although not at the very head of his class at the Military Academy, all who knew him concur in the opinion that he came as near realizing the ideal of a perfect soldier as any of the contestants of the Civil War. His assignment to duty as a first lieutenant of artillery on leaving the Academy, was strong proof that high expectations were already formed as to his future.

Within less than a month after he left West Point (July 22, 1861, to be specific), in company with some thousands of other infantry soldiers, I was floundering along the vile wagon way from the Long Bridge to Bailey's Cross Roads, where our regiment was to make its headquarters for several weeks afterwards, sending out scouting parties from time to time, and establishing picket outposts in what appeared to our uneducated eyes to be appropriate points of vantage. On the Monday just mentioned, a copious rain set in at a very early hour, and the roadsides were strewn with knapsacks, blankets, and other impedimenta of the returning soldiers who plodded along towards Washington from the battle of the day before. Many of them had marched all night, and very few of them had taken more than short intervals of rest during their night exit from the vicinity of Bull Run. One battery was distinguished for its fine appearance, however; and that was Battery A of the Fourth regular artillery. Cushing was in command of it when it met and passed us, and even the events of the preceding twenty-four hours had not been sufficient to take away his smile--although it might have shown a sarcastic side to a closer observer than I then was.