Cullom, William
Born: 1810-06-04 Wayne County, Kentucky
Died: 1896-12-06 Tennessee
Flourished: 1840 to 1896 Tennessee
William Cullom, attorney and public official, was born in Elk Spring Valley, Kentucky. He studied law at Transylvania University and following his admission to the bar he commenced a legal practice in Gainesboro, Tennessee, from which he practiced in the courts of that state and those of his native Kentucky. He settled in Smith County, Tennessee, by 1840, where he continued to work as an attorney. Cullom, a Whig, was elected to the Tennessee Senate, serving 1843 to 1847, and was subsequently a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1851 to 1855. While a member of the U.S. Congress, he gained attention with an 1852 speech that swayed the House of Representatives against a resolution granting extensive aid to the cause of Hungarian patriot Louis Kossuth. Cullom was an opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was elected clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and occupied the position from 1856 to 1857. In addition to elected offices, Cullom represented the Whig Party as a presidential elector for Zachary Taylor in 1848, and was a delegate to the 1852 Whig National Convention. At the time of the 1860 census, he possessed real estate valued at $60,000, personal property worth $65,000, and owned thirty-eight enslaved people. Cullom was the brother of Richard N. Cullom, a political ally of Abraham Lincoln. He married Virginia A. Ingram in 1838. After Cullom and his first wife divorced in 1867, he married Mary Griffin in 1869; both marriages produced children. In religion he was a Methodist, then joined the Catholic Church later in life. Cullom died at his home in Clinton, Tennessee.
Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 890; Robert M. McBride and Dan M. Robison, eds., Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly (Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives and Tennessee Historical Commission, 1975), 1:181-82; Thomas K. Potter, Jr., “My Brother, My Enemy: Fire-eaters, Lincolnites and a Reluctant Rebel,” The Middle Tennessee Journal of Genealogy & History 17 (Summer, 2003), 40-42; A Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Transylvania University (Lexington, KY: J. Clarke, 1833), 13; Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965, 20 September 1838, Wayne County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Smith County, TN, 259; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Smith County, TN, 248; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedule, Smith County, TN, 67-68; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Smith County, TN, 8; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedule, Smith County, TN, 3; Tennessee, U.S., Marriage Records, 1780-2002, 18 January 1869, White County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2008); U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Overton County, TN, 28; The Knoxville Tribune (TN), 22 December 1896, 3:2-5; The Chattanooga Daily Times (TN), 22 December 1896, 6:2-3; Gravestone, Mount Olivet Cemetery, East Ridge, TN.