My Genealogy Hound

William W. Cushing was born in the State of Maine in the year 1835, and at the age of sixteen years entered Oberlin College, Ohio, where he received his collegiate education, and graduated from the Law College at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1860, and was admitted to the bar. He practiced law at Cleveland one and a half years, when he joined the Union army as private in the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant in the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which regiment he assisted to raise and with which he went to the front. He served through the entire war. He was in all the battles fought by the army of the Cumberland; was on Gen. C. H. Harkers’ and George H. Thomas’ staff two years, and rose to the rank of major. At the close of the war, in 1865, he came to St. Louis, Mo., where he taught the high-school at Kirkwood for two years, when he came to Southwest Missouri. He was prosecuting attorney of Stone County two years, also postmaster and assistant United States marshal. He has lived in the city of Marionville sixteen years; owns two good farms adjacent to the city and several houses and lots in town. He was married in 1871 to Myra B. Dickinson, daughter of Justin B. and Betsey Dickinson, of Griggsville, Ill. He is the father of four children, two of whom are living, Willie W. and Bessie J. Cushing. Maj. Cushing and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He is a Mason, member of the I. O. O. F. and G. A. R. His father, Charles Cushing, was born in Boston, and was a sail-maker by trade, but subsequently bought a farm near Lewiston, Me., where he reared a family of ten children, and where he died September, 1870, aged eighty-one years. His mother, Sarah R. Cushing, wife of Charles Cushing, died in Boston, Mass., July, 1876, aged eighty-four years.