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| The approximate location of McCulla's farm is shown in red From Library of Congress |
John McCulla (or McCullough) was a central figure in efforts to reconstruct Chesterfield County during the years after the Civil War. He was a particular figure of hatred for regional conservatives, but he is largely absent from historical accounts of Reconstruction in South Carolina. In this post, we will take a look at who he was and what he did.
McCulla was born in Ireland around 1840. He moved to the United States around the end of the Civil War, when he was in his twenties. (Accounts differ as to whether he arrived in 1864 or in 1866.) I have been unable to find any records about McCulla prior to 1868, so it is unclear why he left Ireland, although there was nothing unusual about it. Ireland saw a huge level of emigration as people tried to flee the famine and poverty that had been devastating the country for decades.
McCulla had moved to South Carolina by 1868, and he quickly found a place within the state's newly empowered Republican Party. Following the ratification of a new state constitution that enfranchised freed slaves, McCulla was appointed treasurer for Chesterfield County by Republican governor Robert K. Scott. This position granted him considerable powers as it made him responsible for collecting taxes and disbursing state funds.
McCulla likely secured his gubernatorial appointment through connections with Chesterfield's state senator, R. J. Donaldson. Both were incorporators for a Chesterfield land development company, the South Carolina Improvement and Trust Company, and the two worked closely together after Donaldson was elected to office.
McCulla purchased land for himself in fall 1868. He bought a two-hundred and twenty-nine acre plot from William K. Edgeworth, a member of a local planter family. The plot was located near the Hornsboro post office, where Thompson's Creek meets Store House Creek. A little over a year later (on January 6, 1870), he bought an adjacent two hundred and three acre plot in a sheriff's sale following the death of the owner (Alexander McMillan). These purchases provide further evidence of McCulla's relation with Donaldson and his supporters. The lands bounded land owned by the Challenge Mining Company which was run by Donaldson's supporters.
McCulla used the land he purchased for farming. He did not have a family, so he was reliant on sharecropping and hired labor. Most of the people he employed were former slaves. As a farmer, McCulla practiced a mixture of cotton growing and subsistence farming that was typical for the region.
The fact that McCulla was able to purchase so much land raises suspicions. He spent over $3,500 only a few years after he had immigrated from a poverty-stricken Ireland. He soon fell under suspicion for corruption and dishonesty. The biggest cause for anger was the allegation that he was "shaving" funds for himself when fulfilling money orders as treasurer.
The way in which McCulla was alleged to have enriched himself is demonstrated by an incident involving the state-funded Poor House. A women, Mrs. Williams, maintained a Poor House for paupers, and she was to receive five dollars per month for each pauper who was boarding with her. In the summer of 1870, the County Commissioners issued a money order to her. McCulla was present when this was done, and he explained that he did not have the funds to fulfill the order. When one of the commissioners, G. W. Duvall, said this was unacceptable, McCulla told Mrs. Williams that she should go to Cheraw and present the order to Mr. Donaldson. This was unusual because Donaldson was then Chesterfield's state senator and had no responsibility for distributing state funds.
Mrs. Williams did as McCulla suggested. However, upon arriving at Donaldson's office, she met with his clerk who only offered to provide her with half of the funds she was suppose to receive. This presented her with a dilemma as the money offered was not enough to provide for the paupers under her care. While debating what to do, she happened to encounter G. W. Duvall on the street. He advised her to see if a merchant would take the money order for payment, but none would. Finally, having exhausted other options, Mrs. Williams accepted the funding that Donaldson's clerk was willing to offer. She was given less than half of the money she was due. The week after, Duvall became upset when he examined McCulla's records and found that it was falsely recorded that Mrs. Williams falsely had received the full amount she was due.
Conservative leaders charged that the treatment of Mrs. Williams was representative of how McCulla performed the duties of his office. Milly Chapman, W. L. Mangum, and Ellenor Horn all reported similar experiences.
Efforts to hold McCulla accountable for misuse of office began to gain momentum in September 1870. Each quarter, the county grand jury issued a presentment which provided them with a forum in which to criticize public officials. That term, the grand jury criticized McCulla and two other public officials. He was criticized for not exhibiting his books to the grand jury, and the circuit judge (James M. Rutland) responded by ordering that his office be searched and he be required to show cause at the next term of court why they should not be primally prosecuted for dereliction of duty.
The criticism McCulla received suggests that the criticism was not purely political. The circuit judge was a moderate Republican, and the grand jury included several Black men (including Oliver Hanna, Lisbon Timmons, Load Miller, and Malcolm McFarlan).
The month after the presentment was issued was the month that the election was held. This was an important event. It was the second election for legislative offices that was held under the new state constitution, and it presented conservatives with their first opportunities to remove the Republicans from county government.
Much was at stake for McCulla. With his personal ties to state senator Donaldson, he had a powerful defender, but Donaldson was up for reelection in October. If Donaldson was defeated by a conservative candidate, then both he and McCulla would not only lose political power, but they would also be facing the wraith of newly empowered conservatives. In fact, Donaldson was running against G. W. Duvall, the very man who had been been frustrated in his efforts to get McCulla to fulfill a money order for the county poor house.
McCulla and other supporters of Donaldson went to extreme efforts to see that Donaldson and other Republicans in the county were reelected. Conservatives alleged that McCulla and others engaged in election fraud. Election managers had given the ballot boxes to McCulla (who had no formal role in managing the election) to bring to Chesterfield Courthouse for counting. However, before he did so, he met with Senator Donaldson's brother-in-law (Alfred T. Peete) who replaced valid ballots for conservative candidates with fraudulent ones.
A little over a week after the election (on October 31), the son of G. W. Duvall (Henry P.) swore a complaint against McCulla, Donaldson, and two others. McCulla was charged with conspiracy to alter the ballots and polls list for the precincts of Oro and Old Store. Based on the complaint, the trial justice Frank H. Eaton ordered their arrests. The fact that Eaton issued orders for arrests is a sign that the charges were serious. Eaton was a Union veteran from Maine and no friend of South Carolina conservatives like G. W. Duvall.
McCulla was released on bond on a few days after his arrest was ordered. However, his fortunes continued to decline. A few weeks after his arrest (on November 22), the conservatives candidates arrived at the statehouse and were sworn in as the elected legislative representatives for Chesterfield County. McCulla's patron, R. J. Donaldson, had been removed from power, and his office was now held by the father of the man who had requested McCulla's arrest, G. W. Duvall.
Unlike Donaldson, McCulla did not lose his position as county treasurer in the October election because his position was appointed, not elected. Nevertheless, his position was in danger. Governor Scott, the man who had originally appointed McCulla, had been reelected, but he could be expected to remake his political appointments in response to the political changes demonstrated by the election.
Removing McCulla from office seems to have been a priority in Chesterfield. In February 1871, Duvall, now Chesterfield's state senator, wrote the governor a long letter asking that McCulla be removed from office and detailing at length his reasons for the request. Not only did Duvall repeat the complaints that McCulla was engaging in financial misconduct, but he also complained that he was "frequently drunk and unfit to attend to business." The governor finally removed McCulla from office in March.
McCulla's legal problems were becoming even more serious during this time. He was subject to a second bench warrant in January. The solicitor had issued a warrant after the grand jury issued a presentment reporting that McCulla had been overcharging for services. (He reportedly was charging five per cent on all monies received and on all funds passing through his office.)
When the court next met (in May), the grand jury indicted McCulla on the charge of failing to turn over his treasurer's books, and he was accused of "outrageously oppressing the people" by charging tax penalties beyond what was allowed by law. The last accusation led to yet another bench warrant was issued.
McCulla finally faced a jury trial in January 1872, a full year after legal proceedings had begun. The trial had been delayed because the judge had not appeared for the previous term of court (held in September). The jury found him guilty on two counts: one for failing to turn over the treasurer's books and one for exercising the office of treasurer after his removal. McCulla was also indicted on official misconduct. There is no record of that third charge being dropped, but this was likely the case as the court journal show that he later repaid the government for the excessive charges he made.
I have not been able to find any record of the sentence that McCulla received, and whatever it was, it seems that he did not serve it. McCulla appealed to the state Supreme Court, and in May 1874, the court struck off the charge.
While McCulla was facing charges for his conduct as treasurer, he was also facing charges for election fraud. The records of what happened with these second set of charges is unclear. The court journal records that the grand jury returned no bill again him and the other men charged during the September 1872 term of court. The indictment paper, signed by the jury foreman, also states that the jury returned no bill. However, indictment records also include a handwritten document, signed by the solicitor, stating that the jury swore on their oath that McCulla and the others had committed the crimes they were accused of. Yet a third outcome was reported by the press: they reported in October that the solicitor had decided not to pursue matters further (i.e. he entered a "nol. pos." against Donaldson and his supporter John McCulla).
The dates on the legal documents raise further questions about what exactly took place. The dates on both the indictment paper and handwritten document have been changed. On the handwritten document, the months "May" and "January" were written and then stricken out and the word January written a second time. Similarly, the year was changed from 1871 to 1872. None of these dates are the dates recorded in the court journal. The dates on the indictment paper are similar. The document is dated to January 1871, but the months "January" and May" were written and then stricken out.
Ultimately, the long-term legal consequences for McCulla seem to have been minimal. Not only does it seem that he avoided jail time, but he was even appointed to serve as an election manager in 1874, only a few years after he was indicted for election misconduct. One possible explanation is that all involved parties felt it was best to avoid further deliberation on the matter and simply move on. The need to prosecute McCulla and others in Donaldson's circle was diminished as county Republicans had largely been removed from power in the 1870 election. Moreover, close scrutiny of the election was likely to raise awkward questions for conservative politicians. In the months following the election, conservatives were accused of having engaged in voter suppression and of being involved in the murder of the Republican, Robert Melton, one of the witnesses set to testify in defense of McCulla and others.
In his correspondence with the governor over the treasury appointment, G. W. Duvall explicitly spoke to the need to reduce political tensions. He wrote that he had made a recommendation regarding the appointment in the belief that it would "end the war between the two factions." He also appears to hint at the potential for further violence. After expressing anger at efforts by a Republican to secure the appointment, Duvall wrote that "[a]ll [is] quiet in this county," with the implication that the state of affairs would change if a poor appointment was made.
After Donaldson was voted out of office, most of Donaldson's supporters left Chesterfield. Donaldson's brother-in-law, who had also been indicted for election misconduct, moved to Spartanburg and found work as a music teacher and later as a dentist. Donaldson himself moved to Columbia for a few years and then ran a rice plantation near Georgetown that he purchased. McCulla, however, remained in Chesterfield County.
McCulla seems to have left political life by the mid-1870s, and certainly his political prospects were minimal by this time as the county government was firmly in the hands of his conservative enemies. He seems to have focused on his farm in Mount Croghan township. In 1880, a census taker recorded that he employed over one hundred Black farmers, making his farm one of the largest operations in the region. .
McCulla appears to have financially supported himself for the remainder of the nineteenth century by renting land to Black sharecroppers. He never had a family, and he certainly could not have performed all the labor that was needed on a farm by himself. I can't find a record of his death, but he was still living in Mount Croghan in 1910, when he was in his seventy years old. By this time, it appears he had largely retired. He sold most of his land in the 1900s. Some of the land was purchased by Archibald Wade Hursey who built a mill, Hursey's mill, on the land.
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| Approximate location of Hursey's Mill indicated in red Image from Google Maps |
Despite the anger that had been directed at him during Reconstruction, McCulla seems to have quickly faded from public memory. In a 1949 newspaper article, an older resident, Tom Turner, was interviewed about the history of the area. Turner recalled Reconstruction as some of the "darkest days," and mentions McCulla by name (although it was printed as "McCullough"). However, he only says that McCulla was a "Yankee" who was involved with a New York-based land development company and oversaw a 2,800 acre plot of land that was rented to Black tenant farmers. No mention is made of election fraud or the misuse of the treasurer's office. In the interview, Turner remarked that many names associated with Reconstruction, "that luckless era," are "better forgotten," and the same attitude appears to apply to McCulla's actions.
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| The area around McCulla's farm From South Caroliniana Library |
Sources
1. The daily phoenix. [volume], November 05, 1868, Image 2
2. The Charleston daily news. [volume], March 24, 1871, Image 3
4. The daily phoenix. [volume], April 06, 1871, Image 2
September Grand Jury
1. W. A. Mulloy (b. 1815). White farmer and merchant in Chesterfield C. H.
2. Lewis Ganey (b. 1846). White farmer in Chesterfield township.
3. Thomas Britt
4. J. H. Williams (b. 1810). A white miller in Alligator township
5. D. B. Douglas (b. 1848) A white farmer in Cole Hill township.
6. O[ilver] Hanna (b. 1832) A Black farmer in Chesterfield township.
7. T[homas] D. Spencer (b. 1840). A white farmer in Chesterfield township.
8. T[homas] M. Kirkley (b. 1835). White constable in Jefferson township. Born in North Carolina.
9. J. W. Watson (b. 1838). A white farmer in Cole Hill township.
10. S[amuel] Wilkinson (b. 1844) A white farmer in Cole Hill township.
11. Lisbon Timmons (b. 1827). A Black farmer in Mt. Croghan township.
12. S. Hegmen?
13. L[oad] Miller (b. 1839). A Black farmer in Jefferson township.
14. D. McLean
15. M[alcolm] McFarlan (b. abt. 1846). A Black farmer in Cole Hill township. 23
16. E. Lowry.
17. J[ohn] H. Lowry (b. abt. 1831): White man living in Mt. Croghan township.
18. W. Miller
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