THE DESCENDANTS of SAMUEL Mccully of EARLY NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA
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THE DESCENDANTS OF SAMUEL McCULLY OF EARLY NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA By Sanford R. Wilbur and Sally Harris Wilbur SYMBIOS BOOKS Gresham, Oregon 2014 Copyright @Sanford R. Wilbur 2014 This book is currently available only in e-book (PDF) format. It may be purchased from: SYMBIOS Books 4367 S. E. 16th Street Gresham, OR 97080 Website: http://www.condortales.com E-mail: [email protected] Cover Photo: Land at Great Village, Colchester County, Nova Scotia, purchased in the 1780s by Samuel McCully (Generation One) 1 PREFACE When my mother-in-law, Calista (Crane) Harris, died in 1993, Sally and I found ourselves in possession of several boxes of miscellaneous family papers. More than once while she was living with us, Calista had expressed her regret that, when she died, she would be burdening us with a lot of old things that she hadn’t gotten around to throwing away. Because we were inveterate packrats, and already had a house crammed with books, papers and other memorabilia, another box or two didn’t seem like too onerous a legacy for her to leave us. After her death, the boxes and her other possessions just sat where they were placed, until one day Sally began to peruse their contents. As might be expected, she found papers and photographs from both the Crane and Harris sides of her family. In particular, she found a number of items related to the McCullys. We knew a little about Sally's McCully connections. When we moved from California to Oregon in 1966, we met Eula McCully, an elderly “cousin” who lived in Salem. We spent a pleasant couple of days with Eula, during which time she showed us ancestral properties in Salem and told us quite a bit of family history. Unfortunately (but as is often the case with young folks, like we were), we weren’t very interested in genealogy at that time. We didn’t write anything down, and didn’t retain much of what she told us. We left Oregon in 1968 with fond memories of a nice visit with a nice lady named McCully, but that was all. Fast forward a quarter-century: as first Sally, and then I, gleaned through Calista’s family papers, the name McCully - to that date, known to us only from our acquaintance with one elderly woman - came to represent a family with ties stretching across North America from Nova Scotia to Oregon. Included were tantalizing bits on pioneer life in Ohio and Iowa; trips to the California Gold Rush; family travels on the Oregon Trail; participation in the early statehood of Oregon; and steam-boating on Pacific Northwest rivers. To say we became intrigued is putting it mildly. In subsequent years, we followed these McCullys (and a lot of their relatives) through libraries, archives, museums, and cemeteries from Oregon to Nova Scotia - and back again, several times - with stops in New Brunswick, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, California - just to name the principal stops - and across the world via the World Wide Web. As so often happens when one gets deeply involved in historical research, some of these people we never knew became very real to us. Perhaps some of them will become real to you, too. Sanford "Sandy" Wilbur 2 INTRODUCTION: FAMILY ORIGINS Family tradition has it that Sally's line of McCullys (rarely, McCulley) came to Nova Scotia from Northern Ireland. While tradition in this case seems reasonable, and might be accurate, there is so far no link between the earliest positively- known North American McCully of the line and his parents in Northern Ireland, or anywhere else. The earliest (nearly certain) record we have is from Nova Scotia in 1774 (see later). The first things we thought we knew about "our" (Sally’s) McCullys in the Atlantic Provinces turned out to be incorrect. A McCully descendant a generation or two before us had traveled from Oregon to Nova Scotia to view the land of her ancestors. She found reference to a Samuel McCully who apparently had come to Nova Scotia from Northern Ireland in the 1760s. She thought she had found the father of John McCully, Sally's great-great-grandfather, the earliest ancestor for whom the family had any information. (John reportedly was born in Nova Scotia in 1784.) Time proved that the Samuel in question was not the father of John McCully, but that first mistake was not to be the last. In fact, confusing and erroneous information on the Nova Scotia McCully origins has been published to the present day. The problems primarily arise from misidentifications among the plethora of Samuels and Williams in the first several generations of McCullys in the Maritime Provinces. There are still significant unanswered questions about the early Canadian McCullys, but three groups can now be separated with some confidence, and substantial lines of descendants have been traced from each of the three. Because McCully was an unusual name in early Maritime Canada, and because all three families were in Colchester County, Nova Scotia, more or less contemporaneously, there have been a number of attempts made to link the three families. It seems likely that at least two of the families are closely related; if not in Nova Scotia, then in the previous generation in Northern Ireland. However, nothing very substantial links the third group, and so far no concrete tie has been found between any of them. For now, each line must be treated separately, the family line in this study beginning with a Samuel McCully first identified in Nova Scotia in 1774.1 * * * In the following pages, we follow the descendants of Samuel McCully - the first known of this line in North America - through six generations. The sixth generation members are identified only by name, birth date, and death date. Some of this 1 The relationships of the three McCully families, as can be surmised from existing information, are discussed in Appendix I. 3 generation are still living, or only recently deceased, and we have respected their privacy in this respect. We have employed a somewhat different identification system than is used in many genealogy texts. Rather than denoting ancestral members by their generation number, e.g., John5 (William4, Robert3, Samuel2, William1), we have used their actual number as given in the "family tree," e. g., John40 (William20, Robert10, Samuel4, William1). We think this makes it easier to follow a line back through the text; the generations are identified by the chapter a person is in, and each person is indexed by "tree" number and page number. Our approach identifying members of this particular "family tree" has been to think in terms of "family," rather than "blood." If children were adopted, they are "family." If children from more than one marriage were raised together, they are "family," even if some had no "McCully blood." Children from previous or later marriages raised with no close contact with the "McCullys," may be acknowledged in the text, but are not numbered. Obviously, there is much more information available for some people than for others. In every case, we've given as complete a picture as we can, while keeping the narratives fairly succinct. If you are interested in more detail, check the "chapter notes" at the back of the book. Not only do they include citations for our sources, but there are many additional items about people and places that didn't quite fit in the concise narratives. 4 The 1788 deed for Great Village lands, John Mahon to the heirs of Samuel McCully 5 CHAPTER ONE GENERATION ONE Samuel McCully1 is known for certain from only three documents. Some time prior to 26 August 1788, he purchased from John Mahon 600 acres of land at Great Village, near Londonderry, Colchester County, Nova Scotia. Samuel McCully was deceased before Mahon drew up the deed, and the property was granted to the McCully heirs [1]. Samuel died intestate [2] and no probate papers have been found, so his heirs were not identifiable until the property was sold, again. On 12 April 1809, Samuel’s oldest son, William McCully, sold to his brothers John McCully and Samuel McCully, for £60 his rights to the Great Village property. At the time, all three brothers were living in Horton, Kings County, Nova Scotia [3]. Some time before April 1812, John and Samuel sold the property to William Spencer of Londonderry for 110 pounds, and both left Horton soon after [4]. Three earlier documents probably involve this Samuel McCully [5]. On 16 April 1774, a man of this name was witness to a land sale between Samuel Nichols and Joshua Lamb, both of Onslow, Colchester County, Nova Scotia [6]. A March 1775 inventory of the business records of the late Henry Glen, a merchant who did business in both Londonderry and Truro, showed a Samuel McCully owing a debt of a little over one pound [7]. Finally, on 30 November 1778, a Samuel McCully sold to William Martin 500 acres of land in Londonderry, for 40 pounds [8]. While others have conjectured about "our" Samuel McCully's origins and family connections [9], he cannot be identified with any certainty until 1774-1775 when he was involved in the above "adult" (at least 18 years of age?) activities. Except for acting as witness to an Onslow land sale, he is known only from Londonderry. However, he is unaccounted for anywhere between 1778 (sale of Londonderry land) and 1788 (deed for Great Village land), so it is possible he was not living in the area all the time. Nothing is known about Samuel's wife, either before or after his death.