McCollough descendants spruce up marker
FAIRVIEW TWP — At one time, it was said around Chicora if you weren’t a McCollough, you knew one or would become one.
Some of the far-flung descendants of the family patriarch, Capt. John McCollough, gathered Friday to spruce up the marker placed along Oak Road in 1927 to mark the place where the Indian War of Western Pennsylvania veteran built a log cabin in 1797 on a 500-acre tract of land.
The inscription reads “Site First Log Cabin Homestead Built by Capt. John McCollough 500 A. Tract 1797 Marker Placed By Heirs 1927.”
Steven McCollough, of Sarver, the great-great-great-great-grandson of John McCollough, said family legend says the other side of the marble marker carrying those words is the original gravestone of the founding father, left behind when his body and that of his wife Elizabeth were moved from the Broken Down Cemetery to Hilltop Cemetery.
The restoration project was started by Sidney Callihan, whose house is just up the road from the marker. In fact, he and his wife, Elaine (McCollough), built their house in 1970 on land that had been known as the McCollough picnic grove until World War II.
Sidney Callihan said, “Capt. John McCollough had seven children, four of them boys. In those days, land went to the sons, so the 500 acres were divided into four farms of 125 acres (each).
“They lived on the property and made their living farming,” he said.
Three of the McCollough descendants — Curtis, Clarence and Theodore — set up the monument in 1927 to mark the 130 years since John and Elizabeth settled on the farm.
Callihan said part of the property was set aside for a picnic pavilion that hosted an annual picnic from 1909 to 1943.
“It was always held on the third Wednesday in August,” he said. “Horses would haul in barrels of water. There was a spring, but this saved on time.”
A field across from the monument on Oak Road was used for baseball games during the picnics, he added.
“1943 was the last year for the picnic,” Callihan said. “It was considered unpatriotic to spend the gasoline to drive to the picnic while there was a war on.”
After the war, the picnics never resumed, he added, saying that from time to time artifacts are found in the field that’s used as a ballfield.
Steven McCollough said, “The family’s gotten spread out all over the country, but there’s still McCulloughs here.”
In fact, his brother, Mark McCollough, who recently retired as a wildlife biologist in Maine, wrote a history of the McCullough family with his father, Curtis.
Titled “Descendants of Capt. John McCollough 1770-1847 and Anna Elizabeth Spangler 1779-1858 Pioneers of Butler County Pa.,” the book outlines how John McCollough, who was in the Westmoreland County militia during the Indian wars in Western Pennsylvania during the 1790s, moved to what is now Butler County when land west of the Allegheny River became available for settlement.
Mark McCollough said, “John McCollough continued to serve in the militia. He became a captain during the War of 1812, when he led Butler County militiamen to Erie in 1813.” The fear was that the British would attack Erie crossing the frozen lake from Canada.
“They didn’t attack and he returned in a month and a half,” Mark McCollough said.
Later in life, John McCollough left the farm to his sons and moved to Butler, where he ran a pottery business from the original log cabin jail down the hill from the Butler County Courthouse.
Mark McCollough said his family still owns the farm Capt. John left to his son, William Wallace McCollough.
His mother, Roseanne McCollough, grew up in Chicora as Roseanne Byrnes. She was the one who quoted the saying about knowing, being or soon becoming a McCollough.
“Well, I only lived about a mile away from their farm, but I didn’t know them very well,” she said. “His father Theodore farmed and worked for PennDOT. Curtis and I met at a Karns City basketball game.”
Callihan, Steven McCollough, George Beck of Chicora, another great-great-great-great-grandson of John McCollough, as well as Devin Corbett, another McCollough descendant, turned out Friday to try and loosen decades’ worth of moss and grime from the stone and marble marker.
Then Corbett turned a pressure washer on the monument and began blasting away the dirt and debris.
“After it dries, we’re going to use hydraulic cement to fix the cracks and seal the seams,” said Corbett.
Corbett said he went to Ryan Ritzert, a concrete contractor, for advice on patching the stone marker.
Callihan said he has contacted a gravestone maker in Sligo named Dana Logue about dressing up the lettering on the marble section.
