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WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION ix

RECORDS AND APPRECIATIONS xi

THREE WISCONSIN CUSHINGS:

A great New England exodus 1

The Cushing Family in Western New York 5

The father of three Wisconsin heroes 8

From Milwaukee to the Nemahbins 13

Removal to Chicago 18

The mother in charge of the family 21

All the boys established 26

The beginning of the War 31

The last year of Alonzo's life 39

Later naval services of William B. Cushing 58

William's letter to his mother 62

After Gettysburg 66

The destruction of the "Albemarle" 67

At Fort Fisher and afterwards 81

Howard Cushing with the Artillery 88

Transferred to the Cavalry 94

Death of the young cavalryman 98

INDEX 105

Erratum

The portrait at p. 56, entitled "Alonzo Hersford Cushing," is that of Howard B. Cushing.

The portrait at p. 94, entitled "Howard B. Cushing," is that of Alonzo Hersford Cushing.

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FACSIMILE OF PART OF LETTER BY ALONZO H. CUSHING, 1862 40

PORTRAIT OF HOWARD B. CUSHING 56

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM BARKER CUSHING 86

FACSIMILE OF PART OF LETTER BY HOWARD B. CUSHING, August 6, 1863 88

PORTRAIT OF ALONZO HERSFORD CUSHING 94

FACSIMILE OF PART OF LETTER BY WILLIAM B. CUSHING, May 15, 1871 102

WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION

JAMES O. DAVIDSON

FREDERICK J. TURNER

REUBEN G. THWAITES

MATTHEW S. DUDGEON

CHARLES E. ESTABROOK

RECORDS AND APPRECIATIONS

ABRAHAM LINCOLN."

THREE WISCONSIN CUSHINGS

Beginning with the last decade of the eighteenth century, and continuing through the first decade of the nineteenth, the northern and western borders of the state of New York were punctuated with settlements of a peculiar people along the entire distance, and reaching inland from the edges of the lakes and rivers along the line, for a number of miles. These settlements were from New England; but their population differed somewhat from the aggregate of those who were left behind. Sires and sons of the great emigration were, in all their movements, much influenced, no doubt, by the views of their wives, mothers, and sisters, but the partiality of history takes notice only of the former.

They were the men, and the offspring of the men, whose sturdy strokes, supplemented by their more delicate and elaborate strokes, had turned New England from a wilderness into fertile fields and flourishing towns, but who were not permitted to reap the fruits of their past endeavors in their old homes. Debts had accrued against them while they had been helping fight the battles of their country in the War for Independence, and their creditors would not accept in settlement the worthless Continental currency with which their country had paid them for their services and sacrifices. In many instances they found their homesteads taken from them and turned over to lawyers and other professional men who had abstained from encouragement of bloodshed by staying out of the army in the "times that tried men's souls." The returning soldiers were disgusted and amazed by what looked to them like a less tolerable condition than that which they had opposed of late with powder and ball. Within a very few years all this feeling culminated in a rebellion against the government--and particularly the judicial branch of the government--of the state of Massachusetts, led by one Daniel Shays, who had attained the rank of captain in the Continental forces in active service.

It seems most likely that the trip from Plymouth to the headwaters of the Hudson was entirely by water; the young man's relations with seafaring, together with the frequency of coastwise voyages from the eastern ports of the old Bay State, would naturally have led him to prefer that route. From the time of his marriage until 1799 neither tradition nor record points out the character or direction of his movements. In the last-mentioned year he is said to have been superintending the construction of a ship, the "Good Intent," at the island opposite Erie, Pennsylvania, although his residence at the same time was in the town of Paris, a few miles south of Utica, New York. On his return home from Erie he took back a team of horses, perhaps the fruit of his ship-building on the lake. The horses claim a a place in history on account of the escape of one of them in the neighborhood of Dunkirk, and the camping-out of the owner, while searching for it, on the site of the village of Fredonia, his home in subsequent years.

It was not until 1805 that the young man finally settled at Fredonia, bringing with him his wife and five children, of whom Milton Buckingham, born in 1800, was to become the father of perhaps the most conspicuously daring trio of sons of one mother of any--not excepting the Roman Horatii or Judean Maccabees--whose exploits have been noted in the pages of history. For, in the days of early champions, personal strength and dexterity counted for so much in battle that it did not appear very extraordinary for Walter Scott's "Fitz-James" to set his back against a rock and defy a whole tribe of armed Highlanders to a close contest. The more modern fighting man can not see the death that he hears whistling and humming about his head in the vicious flight of bullets; or, tearing the atmosphere apart by means of shell that burst into whirring fragments of cast-iron, destroying everything they touch, whether animate or inanimate. He has to be ready for his fate, which may be handed out to him at any instant without the possibility of resistance or escape.

The journey from Oneida County was made in the early winter by ox-sleighs, and must have taken several days, perhaps running into weeks, as the route led the emigrants to Dunkirk by way of Buffalo and the frozen waters along the Erie shore. While spending one night on the ice, a little way off shore, a thaw came on, in company with a strong east wind, and the party had some difficulty in reaching land. Fredonia is only three or four miles inland from the port of Dunkirk, and the family soon found themselves domiciled in the log hut which in those days almost always served as the temporary shelter, at least, of the first occupant of a tract of land in the backwoods of New York.

The Cushings were evidently well-thought-of by their neighbors, so the former ship-carpenter soon received the appointment of associate judge of the Niagara County court. It may seem rather odd at present that this position should have been conferred upon a layman; but the experience at their old homes of the emigrating New Englanders had been such that they retained strong prejudices against regularly-trained members of the learned professions. They were quite generally inclined to prefer the illiterate exhortations of revivalist ministers to the teachings of such clergymen as were accounted orthodox in the Eastern states; to consider home-bred lawyers as more likely to strive for the triumph of justice than those who had devoted their lives to the study of technicalities; and even in respect to medical practitioners, the self-taught empiric was as likely to achieve a financial success among them as would be the graduate of a long-established medical school.

That the choice of Mr. Cushing as a judge was approved by the people, became evident when Chautauqua County was set off from Niagara. In 1811, Judge Cushing took the place of presiding judge in the new organization, and held it for fourteen years. In 1826, after the opening of the Erie Canal, the judge, in company with other citizens of Fredonia, built a boat for traffic on the new waterway, and had it hauled over the three miles between Fredonia and the lake, by ox-teams; there were said to have been about a hundred in the string. The jurist therefore did not retire from the activities of life on retiring from the bench; he found somewhat with which to occupy himself until his death in 1839, respected and honored by the community where he lived.

In the meantime his son Milton had grown to maturity, had taken the degree of doctor of medicine after a classical course of study at Hamilton Literary and Theological Institute, not far from the early boyhood home of the student--a school founded in 1820, and now become Colgate University. The duties of a physician were too exacting for his own health, however. After a few years of practice at Zanesville, Ohio, where he married his first wife, he became a local merchant, and in 1833, when the wife died, was the father of four children, none of whom long survived their early manhood or womanhood.

Not long after the death of Mrs. Cushing, Dr. Cushing removed his business and home to Columbus, where in 1836 he married Miss Mary Barker Smith of Boston, who was visiting in the West at the time. She was then 29 years old, of splendid physical and mental constitution, and fortunately endowed with a passionate love for life in an open, free atmosphere, as near as practicable to nature itself.

After the birth of their eldest son, named for his father, in 1837, the young couple prepared for their removal into the far west of Wisconsin, where the Potawatomi still fished and hunted, and whence the Sauk leader, Black Hawk, had recently been driven. Neither documentary evidence nor tradition show the manner of travel of the young couple--whether through the prairies of Indiana and Illinois, and down the east shore of Lake Michigan, or by sailing vessel around through the straits of Mackinac. Either of the two routes was then available, and neither was especially dangerous.

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