 Grant knew Howard's father well and his wife and Howard's mother were also friends when both lived in St. Louis.Howard came from a military family, as his father, Bushrod Brush Howard, was a captain in the Mexican War.Bushrod Howard, in the early days of the Civil War, commanded Company I, 19th Illinois Infantry Regiment and was killed along with more than one hundred other men of the regiment in a railroad accident at Beaver Creek Bridge on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad.