Dr. Hezekiah D. McCulloch

Summary

Dr. Hezekiah D. McCulloch was one of the most senior men in James Jesse Strang’s Kingdom of Saint James — a man called “Dr.” in later accounts and enumerated as a merchant in 1850, township clerk, judge of probate, county clerk and register of deeds, and a member of Strang’s confidential council — before a personal and financial breach with Strang turned him into an implacable enemy. Milo Quaife, whose 1930 study drew on Strang’s own papers, names McCulloch as the true instigator of Strang’s 1856 assassination: “he was the real assassin of Strang. Although others’ hands fired the guns which slew him, it was the vengeful brain of Doctor McCulloch which conceived the plot.”¹ Other sources held here complicate this picture without overturning it. confidence: contested.

History

A leading man of the Kingdom

McCulloch was, per Quaife, “formerly of Baltimore,” and had “gathered” to the Beaver Islands about the time Strang’s Kingdom was established. “His education, ability, and possession of property enabled him speedily to attain a leading position in the councils of the King”: he was made a judge of the Church’s highest tribunal and a member of Strang’s confidential council; while Peaine Township was still attached to Mackinac County he was elected coroner, and when Emmet County was organized he became its clerk and register of deeds.² The 1892 Michigan Pioneer sketch corroborates this independently, calling him “the most capable of Strang’s followers, an educated Baltimorean.”³ Strang’s own Northern Islander records him signing 1851–52 Township of Peaine ordinances as “H. D. McCulloch, Township Clerk” and elsewhere as “Judge of Probate” — contemporary documentary confirmation of the offices Quaife later described.⁴ The 1850 census transcription gives him age 38, born in Maryland, with Sarah Ann born in Missouri, but leaves the township division blank. His Beaver Island residence is therefore an inference from the county geography, the adjacent Franklin Johnson household and the island’s own records, not a literal census locality statement.⁵ In July 1853 he was still acting for the Mormon side: after the battle of Pine River (see Battle of Pine River) he traveled to Galilee and “dressed [the] wounds” of the Sheriff’s shot posse.⁶

The breach

Quaife describes McCulloch as “addicted to drink” and persisting in “scandalizing the Mormon cause by publicly drinking at the bars of vessels which touched at Saint James,” for which he was rebuked and a plan to send him to the State Legislature was abandoned. A further set of complaints charged him with dishonest business practices, and “gradually the breach between him and the Saints widened, until from a leading councilor of the Church he became its avowed enemy.” He refused to submit to the Church courts’ jurisdiction in cases brought against him while still using them to collect his own debts, and refused to turn over his county office’s records to his successor.⁷ Strang’s own version of the quarrel was published in the Islander on 19 June 1856, the day of the assassination or the day before — a detail Quaife notes without further comment.⁸

“The real assassin of Strang”

Quaife’s judgment is unambiguous and is the central claim of this article: “We have dwelt somewhat at length upon the case of McCulloch, for he was the real assassin of Strang. Although others’ hands fired the guns which slew him, it was the vengeful brain of Doctor McCulloch which conceived the plot and inspired the instruments who executed it.”¹ By his account, McCulloch persuaded the captain of the U.S. steamer Michigan to call at Saint James “in furtherance of his plot,” transferred his own property to one of the ship’s officers beforehand to shield it from Mormon creditors, brought home pistols which he distributed to Thomas Bedford and Alexander Wentworth’s circle, and supplied the names of “the chief men of the Island” to be arrested once Strang was dead.⁹ The 24 June 1856 press despatch independently places him at the scene: “The assault was committed in view of several of the officers and crew… also Dr. H. D. McCulloch, Franklin Johnson, and others, and no effort made to stop it,” and states that Bedford and Wentworth “had joined with the McCulloch faction, in the late schism.”¹⁰ About ten days after the shooting, McCulloch returned to Saint James aboard the Michigan with Wentworth and Bedford and helped attempt to “arrest” Mormons in sight.¹¹

A conflicting account

Elizabeth Whitney Williams gives a materially different picture of McCulloch’s own conduct in the immediate aftermath: rather than an instigator completing his revenge, she has him acting as the wounded Strang’s caretaker, arranging his removal from the island: “Dr. McCulloch had him put on a mattress, carried on board a steamboat and taken to his wife’s home in Wisconsin.”¹² The Wisconsin phrase belongs to Strang’s wife — the sentence says Strang was taken to his wife’s home — and does not establish that the McCullochs themselves had Wisconsin ties. The 1850 census instead places Sarah Ann’s birth in Missouri; Williams elsewhere describes her annual trips home to Baltimore. She also describes “Dr. McCulloch’s residence” as a notable house at the harbor and his wife as a leader of the settlement’s social life who mocked Strang’s dress rules — a household that was “not wholly Mormon” but lived peaceably enough with the King to remain on the island up to that point.¹² Williams does not address the question of McCulloch’s role in planning the shooting at all; the two accounts are not directly contradictory (a man can arrange a killing and still see to the victim’s medical care afterward) but they leave very different impressions of him, and no source held here reconciles them.

Significance

If Quaife’s reconstruction is accepted, McCulloch is the central figure — more than either man who fired a shot — in the internal collapse of the Kingdom of Saint James: a senior official whose personal and financial grievances against Strang, compounded by drink and a fight over county records, escalated into a plot that used the disaffected Bedford and Wentworth as its instruments and the U.S. Navy as its unwitting (or complicit) instrument of extraction. His career is also a case study in the limits of the sources held for this project: the only sustained analysis of his motives and actions is Quaife’s, written seventy-plus years later from Strang’s own one-sided manuscripts, and it should be read as an argument, not an adjudicated fact.

Open questions

• Was he really “the real assassin”? This is Quaife’s conclusion, built largely from Strang’s own papers and the Islander’s account of the quarrel published around the time of the shooting. No independent, non-Strangite source held here directly corroborates that McCulloch “conceived the plot,” as opposed to merely having a well-documented motive and later returning to the island with the assassins.
• How his role as Strang’s post-shooting caretaker (Williams) sits alongside his role as alleged mastermind (Quaife) is not addressed by either source.
• His first name’s exact form. “Hezekiah D. McCulloch” (Quaife) versus the bare initials “H. D. McCulloch” used throughout the contemporary press and the Northern Islander — not a contradiction, but no source held here gives a middle name in full or confirms Quaife’s rendering against a primary document.
• Birth, death, and later life. Birth circa 1812 in Maryland and Sarah Ann’s Missouri birthplace are reported by the 1850 census transcription, but the household’s exact locality is inferred rather than written in the record. Death and later life remain unestablished. The Wisconsin inference about the McCullochs has been dropped: Williams’s sentence concerns Strang’s wife, not McCulloch’s.
• Whether he was ever charged or tried in connection with the assassination. No record of prosecution specific to McCulloch (as opposed to Bedford and Wentworth) has been located here.

See also

• Assassination of James Strang
• Battle of Pine River
• Thomas Bedford
• Alexander Wentworth
• James Jesse Strang
• Kingdom of Saint James

Sources