John R. McCullough was the youngest child of James McCullough and Nancy Fort (or Ford). John’s eldest brother was 18 years older than John, and while John was the ninth child born to the family, only five of his older siblings were still alive when he was born.
This McCullough family struggled through the economic “boom and bust” cycles that you may have read about in middle school history, and judging by the number of unexplained deaths, they also struggled to stay alive in the time before germ theory was well understood, and there were no vaccines or antibiotics.
When people are struggling, they aren’t often thinking about maintaining accurate records, and so much of what we have to tell us about their lives amounts to family legend.
The Ephemera of Lore
Much of what we think we know about this family comes from James McCullough and Descendants, A Family History1, the cover of which is our “featured image” above. This paragraph from Maxcy and McSween introduces John to the family:
James, Jr., married Nancy Fort about 1829 and their first three children were born in Kentucky. In April 1834, his father gave James, Jr., 80 acres of land. In September of that year, he sold the land to his half-brothers, Daniel and John McCullough, and he and Nancy moved to Rush County, Indiana. In 1835 they bought 80 acres there. They did very well for awhile, but soon were having a hard time financially. They lost their little son JAMES III in 1836 and another infant in 1838. By 1848 they had five more children and had lost EMILY J. Nancy died in 1850, when her son, John Riley, was only two.
John’s oldest brother, Benjamin Franklin McCullough, died at age 23 in 1853. Maxcy’s description of Ben says only, “He must not have been a strong person. Nothing is said about him.”
When she says “Nothing is said,” Maxcy is probably referring to the somewhat ephemeral source material she had to work with. She sources some information to a family bible that was owned by a descendant, Ruth Points, in 1987; and she quotes heavily from a 1896 autobiography written by John’s older brother, Andrew. Andrew characterizes his family as impoverished, moving frequently to find opportunities, and struggling to get out of debt.
After Nancy died, James McCullough remarried, but while the Maxcy book (citing that family Bible) lists his second wife as “Sarah Yocum,” there do not appear to be any records to support this. In fact, records don’t support much of what Maxcy and McSween tell us about the years of John Riley’s childhood:
“When Nancy died in October 1850, James, Jr., was left with three small children, ages 2, 4, and 8 and Andrew J. who was 14. James, Jr., married Sarah Yocum in 1852. He and Sarah had two children; a daughter Nancy and a son Charley. Sarah was about 25 years younger than James, Jr., and he probably thought that she would be there to help with the children until they were grown and be company for him when he was older, but that was not to be. Sarah died in 1858 or 1859 and he was again left with small children. 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 1860 Census seems to support this story, as it lists James in a household with John and Nancy, but when you consider the years in which important events happened, you begin to see how a poorer family with no fixed address could fall through the documentary cracks.
A Young Man On His Own
John McCullough was sixteen years old when his father died, and the country had been at war for three years. Wars have always been an employment opportunity for poor young men, and John mustered into Company I of the 1st Regiment, Indiana Heavy Artillery Battery, as a private on 29 March 1864.
His Company performed garrison duty at New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and at various points in the Dept. of the Gulf from the summer of 1864 till Feb 1865. The regiment was part of the campaign against Mobile, Alabama, from 17 March to 12 April 1865. This included the Siege of Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, March 26-April 8, followed by the occupation of Mobile from 12 April until 24 June 1865. Companies “I” and “M” did garrison duty at Fort Pickens, Florida, until Jan 1866.
John mustered out with his unit at Baton Rouge on 10 Jan 1866.
Veteran John found work as a farm hand. We know he was in Indiana in 1870, but farm work can keep a person moving, and I assume John moved a lot during the decade after the war. John was in Missouri Valley, Iowa, by the mid-1870s, and it was there he met his wife, Alice, and settled down to farm and raise their family.
A Story Worth Learning
We’ll spend some time talking about Alice and the children in a couple of weeks, but for now, there isn’t a lot left to say about John’s biography that is grounded in facts or documents. Unlike my 2nd-great-grandfather, young John McCullough was not a poet and did not leave behind an artifact documenting his thoughts. Unless another cousin turns up with a collection of letters by or about John and his family, we have to be satisfied with a newspaper obituary’s summary of his life:
He was ever a good soldier and citizen, a loving father and a Christian. He united with the Christian church in early manhood and transferred to the M.E. church in Mo. Valley 36 years ago, when Rev. Woodward was pastor. He was always a consistent Christian and was willing and ready to meet his God.2
If you stop and think about it, this is all we get for most people of John’s era: spotty childhood records, a period of military service, and three or four decades summed up by the church he attended and a few general comments on his character.
This is why it’s important to go deeper and read the history of the area where your ancestor lived during their lifetime. You can find some general history on Harrison County’s official website, and there are three volumes on the Internet Archive:
- History of Harrison County, Iowa, published by Charles Walter Hunt in 1915
- History of Harrison County, Iowa, published by the National Publishing Company of Chicago in 1891
- History of Harrison County, Iowa, published by Joseph H. Smith in 1888
Only one of those works mentions the surname “McCullough,” and that seems to be an unrelated family; but all three books were published in John Riley McCullough’s lifetime, and can tell you a lot about the changes going on around him and his farm over the course of his life. For now, I’ll have to leave it to other cousins to tease out those details.
This is a life that unfolded in the period between the Civil War and World War I, when America found itself propelled to prominence as a world economic power, and all of the growing pains that came with that transformation. John McCullough may have only played the same small part that a million other Midwestern men played, but that is, in itself, a story worth learning.
- Maxcy, Mabel E, McSween, Jimmie D.; James McCullough and Descendants, A Family History; 1991, Penny Press, Inc., Denton-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas, U.S.A., pages 74-76. ↩︎
- Newspapers.com, Missouri Valley Times, Missouri Valley, Iowa, 16 May 1918, Thu, Pg 3, John R. McCullough. ↩︎
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