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William Howard McCarthy was born in 1909, the son of Emmett and Jessie M. Bronson McCarthy. His older brothers John and Richard had been born in 1904 and 1907. His younger brothers Dean and Gordon were born in 1911 and 1915.

William had two first cousins nearly the same age, and with the same name, who also grew up in the Wisconsin Rapids vicinity: William McGrogan (b. 1909 to Aunt Lizzie) and William C. Sheehan (b. 1907 to Aunt Laura).

There were older male first cousins as well, all born to five McCarthy sisters between 1891 and 1905:
two other McGrogan sons (Russell-1902 and Adrian-1905),
one other Sheehan son (John-1905),
plus three McGrath sons (Alexander-1891, Emmett-1893, George-1899),
three LeMense sons (Leonard-1897, Arthur-1900, Howard-1902),
and three Connor sons (Ronald-1900, James-1903, George-1904).

Of William's uncles who had sons, Marcel's four sons born in Minneapolis were put in an orphanage in 1918. Uncle John's two sons were born in North Dakota after 1910, and Uncle Justin's four sons were born in northern Wisconsin after 1918.

These nineteen young men who grew up in or near Wisconsin Rapids, and the ten young men who grew up elsewhere, were all grandsons to John and Louise McCarthy. Of Emmett's five sons, only his oldest son John, born in 1904, knew grandfather John McCarthy before he died in 1906, but they all knew their grandmother Louise until her passing in late 1916. William was 7, and his two older brothers were 9 and 12, when their grandmother Louise died, so all three had clear memories of her.

When William was 23, he married 19 year old Dora Westover (1913 – 1972), on March 11, 1932 in Wisconsin Rapids. In 1932-33, three of his first cousins died: Aunt Ella's son George McGrath, age 34, was killed in a car accident in Wisconsin Rapids in 1932, and his older brother Emmett McGrath, age 39, drowned in a river at a picnic on a hot June day in 1933, two days before Rev. William Reding, the local priest who knew the McCarthy family well, celebrated both his 40th anniversary as a priest, and the 60th anniversary of the the parish Saints Peter and Paul. Also in 1933, deceased Aunt Nettie's son James Connor, age 30, died in an accidental police shooting in Wisconsin Rapids.

By 1932, three of William's six McCarthy aunts had died (Laura, Hattie, and Nettie), leaving aunts Ella, Lizzie, and Lenore and their six brothers, including William's father Emmett, the second oldest McCarthy son. By the time William was 35 twelve years later, they were all gone, except the youngest, Uncle George McCarthy. Only William's oldest children born in the mid to late 1930's would have had any memory of their grandfather Emmett, who died in 1944 at the age of 68.

William and Dora raised a family of eleven children born between 1934 and 1950 in Wisconsin Rapids.

William, age 63, died Jan 25, 1972 in Port Edwards, Wood, Wisconsin. His wife Dora, age 59, died the same year.