By MICHAEL F. DWYER
A monument atop the terraces in Pittsford’s Evergreen Cemetery marks the final resting place of Timothy McCullough (1850 [in fact, 1849]–1918 and his wife, Susanna. It also sparks curiosity that Susanna was nine years older than her husband. Descending cascades mark the graves of other family members, but these stones do not attest to the complex migrations of three generations of the McCullough family to the United States from the Eastern Townships of Canada. Before delving into their story, we must go back a generation to Timothy’s father, Charles Lawrence McCullough (1803–1889).
Census records after 1851 point to Charles’s birthplace as Nova Scotia. No contemporary source, however, names the specific town or the names of his parents. This lack of information did not stop dozens of family historians from averring that Charles was the son of John or Jean McCullough who wed Praxède Saulnier in Digby, Nova Scotia, around 1785. Catholic baptism records of their children preclude Charles from being part of their family. We do know that as a young man in his twenties, Charles moved to Lacolle, Québec, only about seven miles from the border of New York State. Records of the adjacent Odelltown Methodist Church show that Charles first wed Hannah Palliser, daughter of a Scottish immigrant, and shortly after her death in 1838, he married Esther Scarf, born in Yorkshire, England. Odelltown, three miles south of Lacolle, was founded by United Empire Loyalist John Odell. The town, now absorbed by Lacolle, became a mecca for other descendants of Loyalists who fled the American Revolution as well as Irish and Scottish immigrants who seized the opportunity to settle newly established townships. Charles may have belonged to either group. Making the puzzle of Charles’s parents more difficult, no other McCullough family has been found in the surrounding towns near Lacolle. The best option for one day solving this genealogical brick wall may be through DNA evidence.
Timothy Hoyle McCullough, fifth child of Charles and Esther, was baptized at the age of four months at the Odelltown Methodist Church on August 15, 1849. By 1860, Charles, Esther and eight children moved over the border to Champlain, New York, where he was counted in the census as a day laborer. Charles became a naturalized United States citizen on February 26, 1866. The 1870 census of Champlain shows Charles, now a farmer with $2,500 in real estate, with Esther and four children. Two of their children had already moved to Vermont. In September of 1878, Esther died in Lacolle, where she had been living with the family of her daughter, Esther Napper. After his wife’s death, Charles McCullough did not return to the United States. His burial on October 31, 1889 was documented in the register of the Odelltown Methodist Church.
Meanwhile, around 1869, Timothy H. McCullough married a young widow, Susanna Clark nee Wright, whose husband Andrew Clark died in a sawmill accident in 1864. Susanna’s three children, Andrew, Robert, and Nancy Clark were then parceled out to other families and never joined the McCullough household. Timothy and Susanna touched down in Vermont long enough for their son Charles’s birth to be recorded in Middlesex on October 9, 1870, but they soon rejoined family back over the border. For the next three decades, Timothy and his growing family remained in Clarenceville, Québec.
But once again, there was a pull to the United States. In 1910, Timothy, Susanna, and their youngest son, John moved to Pittsford, Vermont. Tragedy soon stalked the family. A newspaper account from November 29, 1911 cited that “careless handling of food and candy” from John McCullough to an Annie Beaudry resulted in a typhoid outbreak in two households. Susanna McCullough died of the disease. Following his wife’s death, Timothy purchased a property at 8 ½ Arch Street in Pittsford, where he and his son John ran a blacksmith shop. Timothy’s obituary on December 19, 1918 attested as to how far-flung the family had become with children in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Québec, and his sister Esther Napper in North Dakota. Another of Timothy’s brothers had settled in South Dakota.
Other members of the McCullough family continued to migrate to Pittsford. Timothy’s son, Albert Luther McCullough, known as Bert, crossed from Clarenceville, Québec, to Alburg, Vermont, where he married Harriet Fournival on November 1, 1893. Over the next 24 years, Harriet gave birth to 17 children, of whom 14 lived to maturity. It is difficult for us to imagine today how one house could have held this many children! In families this size, the older children were often out of the house before the younger children were born. The process of emigration started with son Bert and Harriet’s son Kenneth McCullough who crossed the border at Rouse’s Point in 1915 “by team.” His parents and remaining siblings are documented entering the United States through Rouse’s Point in 1920. They settled in Florence, where Bert found employment working in the quarries of the Vermont Marble Company. Pittsford’s 1930 census gives a snapshot that most of the children were out of his house with only son William, daughters Queenie, Catherine, and granddaughter Esther living with them. A short news story appeared in The Rutland Herald on November 4, 1933 to mark the couple’s 40th wedding anniversary. Two years later, Hattie died at home on November 27, 1935, age 62, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Her obituary noted 35 grandchildren.
Bert spent his remaining years with his son Homer McCullough in Proctor. In the weeks preceding Bert’s death on November 16, 1940, his son Thomas died in June, and grandson Kenneth, age 14 died in a car accident in August. Bert’s obituary listed 40 grandchildren. Though the family had purchased multiple lots in Pittsford’s Evergreen Cemetery, they ran out of room as the family continued to multiply.
Over the years, I asked various clusters of McCullough acquaintances and students, “Are you related to— McCullough?,” with the answer usually, “No,” or “I don’t think so.” Now armed with the discovery of multiple generations of McCulloughs, I know they were indeed related, though not closely. After all, how many of us could name all our fourth or fifth cousins? From this family study, I observe the process of emigration/immigration is not always linear but often circular, especially in the century of a relaxed border between us and Canada.
[Acknowledgments: Pittsford Historical Society, John W. Tower, Sr., who has spent decades researching his wife Janice’s McCullough ancestors. We honor Janice’s mother, Iola (Balcom) McCullough, who passed away on August 15, 2025, age 96.]
