William Cyrus Howard was born July 24, 1840 near Ripley, Brown County, Ohio, the second son of William Cyrus Howard (1812-1877) and Mary (Stephenson or Stevenson) Howard (1816-1886) and younger brother of Alfred S. Howard (1836-1886). Howard the younger served during the U.S. Civil War with the 4th Independent Ohio Calvary and was wounded during its advance on Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 12, 1863.

Following the war, Howard married Lizzie Mary Harding King (born 1844), also of Brown County, in May 1866. They had two children: James Harvey King Howard, born in 1867, and Alfred Stephenson or Stevenson Howard, born in 1874.

During this time, Howard began acquiring land in the new state of Kansas, in Miami, Jefferson, and Douglas Counties. This included a farm in Palmyra Township, Douglas County, which he purchased in 1868. From 1868 to 1883 Howard was an absentee owner, hiring managers to run his farms in Kansas, visiting occasionally to check on the management and operation of his holdings while he supervised the Brown County, OH farmstead. Lizzie's father, James H. King, and uncle, John Harvey, were living near Baldwin, Doulgas County, KS, and also helped Howard manage his affairs in Kansas.

Lizzie (King) Howard died in 1883, and it is likely that around this time Howard moved to Kansas permanently. From 1888 to 1892 he represented the 17th District (Baldwin City) in the Kansas State Senate.

On March 6, 1890, Howard remarried, to Catharine Groh (born in 1860) in Ripley, Ohio. They had three children, two of whom survived infancy: William Tecumseh Howard, born in 1892, and Lannes Dassaix Howard, born in 1896. William Cyrus Howard died in 1919 and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Baldwin City, Kansas. His wife Catharine died in 1947. W. T. and Lannes continued managing the family farm after their father's death until their own deaths in 1970 and 1954, respectively.