Finis Ewing Kavanaugh and the Battle for Cubero

Cubero in the 1860s, Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, NMHM/DCA, 15757 Cubero is a tiny town with a big Civil War story about a battle that was won without a single shot being fired, by a small but determined group of men against a garrison ten times its size. Located just north of I-40 between Laguna Pueblo and Grants, 45 miles west of Albuquerque, the town has less than 300 people today. It has a post office and an elementary school, but not much else.

At the time of the Civil War, Cubero was a small farming community.Cubero and nearby San Fidel provided hay for the horses stabled at Fort Wingate. It also housed a depot that the Army kept there to keep its soldiers supplied during its intermittent campaigns against the Navajo. The depot, and the trail to Fort Wingate, were guarded by 45 soldiers who were Volunteers in the New Mexico militia. Sutlers sold extra food and supplies to soldiers. Their stores were often in tents so they could move with the army. One of Cubero’s most prominent citizens was Finis Ewing Kavanaugh (some records spell his name with a C). Born in 1833, in Lafayette, Missouri, Kavanaugh attended St. Louis Medical College before establishing a practice in Santa Fe. During the 1850s he served as physician on several of the Army’s Indian campaigns and was part of the expedition into Utah during the Mormon War.

In 1858, he became co-owner of a sutler’s store, a store that provided goods to soldiers, at Camp Floyd.  He also owned the post sutleries at Cubero and Fort Fauntleroy, which changed its name to Lyon, and finally Wingate after Colonel Thomas Turner Fauntleroy left the Union Army to assume a position as brigadier general in the Provisional Army of Virginia. Kavanaugh owned and raced fine horses and served in the territorial legislature. His wife (who may have been common-law), Refugio Aguilar stayed on Kavanaugh’s ranch near Cubero. They had at least 2, and possibly 5 children.
Bill Davidson Although he had served in the U.S. Army, Kavanaugh was a Confederate sympathizer. When he learned that Confederate Brigadier General H. H. Sibley was leading his Army of New Mexico up the Rio Grande, he hatched a plot to provide the Rebels with supplies. Accompanied by three fellow conspirators, George Gardenhier, R.T. Thompson, and Richmond (sometimes called Richard, or Dick) Gillespie, Kavanaugh confronted Francisco Aragon, the captain of the post at Cubero. They convinced the captain that they were the vanguard of a mighty Army, which was bearing down on the post, and that it would be wise of the captain to surrender.

Bill Davidson, a soldier in Sibley’s Army later wrote that, immediately after the battle of Valverde, General Canby had sent a courier to Cubero warning them of the Confederate approach, but the Indians had killed the courier. Whether or not this is true, Aragon was caught completely off guard, and quickly surrendered. the Battle of Cubero was won without a single shot being fired: four Confederates had managed to overwhelm a 45 man garrison with words alone.

​Gillespie then rode to Albuquerque, where he got Captain A. S. Thurmond and Company A of the 3rd Texas Mounted Volunteers to return with him to Cubero to retrieve the captured supplies. They were able to bring between 20 and 25 wagon-loads of military supplies including 60 guns and 3,000 rounds of ammunition back to Albuquerque. Some of the Confederate soldiers who arrived at Cubero were sick and ended up staying at the abandoned post, where they lived off supplies from Kavenaugh’s store. Three of those soldiers died, probably of pneumonia, and are buried in Cubero’s cemetery.  Kathy Helms/Independent https://www.ftwingate.org/docs/pub/ Correspondence/Aug_10_2017_A_Piece_of_Civil_war_history_lies_in_Cubero_Cemetery.pdf When Kavanaugh and his accomplices were indicted for treason, he headed for Texas, where he was commissioned as a Major in Baird's 4th Texas Cavalry. Kavanaugh's property was confiscated by the U.S. Army and sold for $1,657.28. I could find nothing explaining what happened to his wife and children, which it seems he abandoned when he left the territory. In Texas, he became friends with Colonel Dan Showalter.

After the war, Dr. Kavanaugh went south to Mexico, where he and Showalter opened a bar in Mazatlan.  Showalter was shot and killed in a bar fight in February 1866. Some records state that Kavanaugh died in that same fight, while others report that he died of alcoholism and tuberculosis. He was 33 years old when he was buried in the U.S. National Cemetery in Mexico City. Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of middle grade novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War. The Cubero incident described above happened during the time covered in The Worst Enemy, book 2 of the series. Book 3 will be published in October 2024.