Wavetops: James McCullough, Jr. (1804-1864)
A Hard Row to Hoe
You might recall I was very excited to find a book documenting this family last year:
I finally got to spend some quality time looking at the evidence presented in this book and untangling some of the questions it raises - and when all is said and done, there are some interesting stories to share.
But you have to sort through a LOT of men with the same two or three names: James, John, and William McCullough. Starting with John Riley McCullough (1848-1918) whose grandson, Bob, was my wife’s paternal grandfather:
his father was James McCullough (Jr.) - the subject of today’s post
The Facts (as related)
James McCullough, Jr., was the youngest child of James and Drusilla McCullough. His birthdate was passed down in a family Bible as September 1, 1804 - but where most young men in Kentucky were placed on the Tax Roll as voters when they turned 21, James, Jr. appeared in 1822, about three years early. His father also sold his Mercer County property in June 1804 and Drusilla did not sign the deed; this suggests she may have died before that date, which would mean James, Jr. was born earlier than that. This is why some sources put his birthdate in 1801.
James, Jr. grew up on a farm near Mount Sterling, Montgomery County, Kentucky. His mother (Drusilla) died when he was an infant, and his father remarried, so James was raised by a stepmother, Eleanor, and had six younger half-siblings.
James married Nancy Fort (or Ford) about 1829, and their first three children were born in Kentucky. In April 1834, his father gave him 80 acres of land, which he sold to his younger half-brothers, Daniel and John, that September. In 1835, James and Nancy moved 170 miles north to Rush County, Indiana, where they bought 80 acres, about halfway between Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
The dry historical facts and dates sometimes downplay how difficult this time was for a young family. When James and Nancy moved to Indiana, their first three children were a 5-year-old son, Benjamin Franklin, a 3-year-old daughter, Drusilla, and an infant James III. Little James III died in May 1836, and the Maxcy book reports that they lost another, unnamed infant in 1838 - possibly during childbirth. A daughter born in 1840, Emily J., died at age six - just a few months after her little sister, Hannah, was born in May 1846.
One of James and Nancy’s surviving sons, Andrew, wrote this description of their life in 1896:
“My father was in very good circumstances when he came to Indiana but like thousands of other men, he couldn’t say ‘No,’ when asked to go on Security1, and the result weas, he was soon reduced to poverty - and his family increasing in numbers, and he growing older and less able to accumulate, poverty followed him the remainder of his life.
“My mother was not a very stout woman. She was the mother of nine children, five of whom are living at this writing. We resided in Rush county . . . three years, then, having lost all his property paying others debts, we moved to the adjoining county of Decatur. But this move didn’t better his financial condition . . . he concluded Clay count was the ‘Eldorado’. So, on the 26th of December, 1842, we ‘struck our tent’ and started for old Clay.”
“. . . two young men, friends of my father, living here and anxious to have Clay County settled up, hired an old wagon and came for us. This wagon broke down three times during the trip . . . we did not arrive in Brazil till January, 1843. The snow was about ten inches deep and the weather cold. . . Our entire possessions consisted of a few old household goods, such as could be crammed into the wagon, leaving room for my mother, five children and the driver. Our live stock consisted of one horse, a cow and six sheep . . . . It seems to me my parents must have had great courage to endure the situation, their whole earthly possessions less than $100, with five helpless children, in mid-winter, and it seems to me a more desolate, dismal and god-for-saken place would have been hard to find than Clay County at that time. No roads, no schoolhouses, no churches and no mills. The nights were enlivened by the howl of the wolf, and in summer you had to be on the alert to esape the fangs of the rattlesnake and copperhead. Neighbors were few and money was scarce.”
Andrew was six years old when the family moved to Clay county. He was 14 when his mother died in October 1850, leaving James to care for Andrew and three small children - William (8), Hannah (4), and John Riley (2).
James married Sarah Yocum (1826-1858) in about 1852; she was about 25 years younger than James, suggesting that he probably expected her to be around to take care of his children if anything happened to him. They had a daughter, Nancy, and a son, Charley, before Sarah died in October 1858.
According to the Maxcy research, “A family took the young son Charley; Hannah went to live with the Francis Yocum family; William D. and Andrew J. went out on their own; so only John Riley and Nancy (Sarah’s daughter) were at home by 1860, and their father died in 1864.”
The Facts (as contradicted)
A lot of these facts are relayed to us through secondary sources - like Andrew J. McCullough, who was young when these fairly traumatic events played out, and who wrote down his memories about half a century later.
Records are contradictory or missing for a lot of these key events. Moving to a Midwest County before it has a courthouse means vital records were probably not taken - and when we do find records, they could be referring to different families. There are several men named “James McCullough” - with various spellings, like “McCalla” and “McColley” - who may or may not be our James McCullough residing in various Indiana counties at the same time: Clay County and Rush County, but also Clay Township in Wayne County, or Union Township in Montgomery County (Indiana, not Kentucky).
Complicating some of this is the way later records misstate some information. For example, Nancy (McCullough), Sarah Yocum’s daughter, would have been raised by another family from an early age. On her Iowa death certificate in 1943, Nancy’s parents are recorded as “William McCllough” born in Scotland, and “Elizabeth Baldwin” born in Ireland. I suspect that “Elizabeth” was the name of the person who took Nancy in after her father’s death in 1864, but I don’t know for certain.
More work is required to address some of these problems, but we seem to have a solid chain of evidence connecting John Riley McCullough to his parents, James and Drusilla.
If you are researching any of these folks, I’m happy to compare notes!
Most likely, “to go on Security” refers to making a speculative investment—the money accumulated by the great “Captains of Industry” came from many small investors like James McCullough. UPDATE:
The phrase "go on security" as said during the late 1800s meant to pledge collateral for a loan. Not only banking but pawn shops would offer this type of service. If you can't pay the loan back, you lose your collateral. Many poor people live hand to mouth, unable to break free from usury rates of interest, and failure to pay off loans, losing larger assets in the process.