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Cherokee County Biographies
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Lewis James McCulla
LEWIS
JAMES McCULLA is one of the three original homesteaders still living in
Spring Township. He settled upon the land which is now his
home
in the spring of 1870, and his farm now consists of 700 acres of fine
land, lying principally in O'Brien County. Mr. McCulla was
born
in Montreal, Canada, September 20, 1843, and is the eldest of four
children; the others are Ellen, Sarah, and the well-known editor of the
Cherokee Times. When but a boy our subject removed with his
family to Buffalo, New York, and in 1857 he migrated to Iowa, and
settled in Muscatine County. At the age of fifteen years he
secured a position on a river steamboat, and for three years followed
the river. He then decided to further fit himself for the
battle
of life by learning a trade, and accordingly entered a machine shop at
Muscatine, Iowa, working one year, in which he made satisfactory
progress. It was at that time there was a call for men to go
to
the defense of this nation's flag, and Mr. McCulla responded, enlisting
in Company H, Eleventh Iowa Volunteer Infantry. At Lake
Providence, Louisiana, he was transferred to the Sixty-first Missouri
Light Artillery, with which he served until the battle of Atlanta, when
he was sent on a foraging expedition, and was captured by guerrillas,
and for six months was confined in prison. But one besides
himself of the eight men captured from his county came out alive.
He had participated in may of the severest battles of the
war,
among them Shiloh, the siege of Corinth, Meadow Station and Vicksburg.
He received his discharge at St. Louis and returned to his
old
Iowa home. There he engaged in farming until 1869, when he
went
to what is now the flourishing village of Creston, Iowa, and
there assisted in building the first house in that place. The
following spring he came to Cherokee County and secured his home.
He devotes his time and energies especially to
live-stock,
breeding and shipping. He feeds from two to four car-loads
annually, and 150 head of hogs. Mr. McCulla was married in
Cherokee County to Miss Mary Adel Coleman, a daughter of Philo G. and
Rachel (Baldwin) Coleman. They have had six children born to
them: Walter, Carrie, Ben B., Thomas, Mary and Asa. Philo G.
Coleman removed from New York to Iowa, settling in Johnson County.
In 1872 he came to Cherokee County, and since that time has
made
it his home. Politically Mr. McCulla is a Republican and is
one
of the leading men of his party in Spring Township.
Source: Biographical History of
Cherokee County, IA, W. W. Dunbar & Co Publishers,
1889
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