Roger McCullough
Great-great-grandson of John McColloch · Betty’s husbandThe correspondent.
The Correspondent
Betty preserved the letters. Roger wrote new ones. While Betty organized the family threads and cross-referenced census data, Roger was the one reaching out — writing to strangers who shared the McCullough name, trading research with Betty K. Summers, J.L. Sterritt, Rachel Heater, and Mrs. Donald Williams. He tracked down court records in Logan County courthouses, corresponded with historical societies, and kept the network of family researchers connected.
By the late 1990s Roger was on AOL email — bero@erinet.com — connecting the old paper trail to the digital age. His emails read like his letters: direct, detailed, methodical. He didn't just ask questions. He sent what he had and asked what you had back.
The Trail
Roger's research built the McCullough side of the story — the line that connected him and Betty to 19th-century Ohio and, before that, to Ireland. What he uncovered:
- John McColloch came from Ireland or British territory — proved by a citizenship oath referencing George IV, placing it in the 1820s.
- John settled in West Liberty, Logan County, Ohio around 1819 and married Mary Pugh.
- They had seven children: Alexander, Jane, Robert, Eliza, Mercy, William, and Anna Belle.
- Anna Belle McColloch (1832–1911) — Roger's great-great-grandmother — never married. She had Alonzo Howard out of wedlock.
- The name was spelled a dozen different ways across the records — McCuller, McCulah, McCollough, McCalough — each clerk and census taker hearing it differently.
- The lineage: John McColloch → Anna Belle → Alonzo Howard → Alonzo Frank → Roger.
The Family
The family chart assembled from Roger's research — the McColloch line from John and Mary Pugh through their seven children and the branches that followed.
The Documents
Roger's research generated its own paper trail — correspondence with other descendants, court records, family charts, and handwritten summaries. These are some of the documents from his collection.
Route 66, Summer 1966
In July 1966, the McCulloughs headed west on Route 66 — Roger, Betty, and their children Phil and Nancy. Betty kept a small notebook: typed itinerary in front, expense columns in the middle, and handwritten diary observations in the back.
Twenty days. The Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Las Vegas, the Rocky Mountains. Recurring radiator trouble from Arizona to Colorado. Over $100 spent in a single day in Las Vegas. Cows standing in water up to their shoulders in Oklahoma. Six rainbows near Albuquerque.