True West Magazine LT HOWARD CUSHING There were many brave officers in the Frontier Army during the darkest days of the Apache campaigns in the late 1860s and early 1870s but none braver than Lieutenant Howard Cushing. He was a member of one of America’s most famous family of war heroes that included brothers, Milton Jr., Alonzo and John Cushing. Their father, Dr. Milton Cushing Sr. received his medical degree and settled in Zanesville, Ohio where he married his first wife Abigail. They had four children. She died in 1833. Three years later he married Mary Smith and they would have five children, Milton Jr., Howard, Alonzo, John and Mary. He died of tuberculosis in 1847 leaving her penniless and nine children to raise. Abigail’s children were nearly grown. Eventually Milton Jr. and Howard would take jobs to help support the family. When war came in 1861, all of Mary’s four boys joined the Union cause. Mary would outlive all her four sons.