Biography - Woodson McCuan
WOODSON S. McCUAN was born in Limestone County, Ala., May 2, 1828. He is a son of John and Lizzie (Wickham) McCuan. The father of John McCuan came from Ireland to the United States at an early day. John McCuan removed from Alabama to Kentucky, and there reared his family of seven children. He purchased government land at $1.25 per acre and resided upon it until his death. Woodson S. McCuan remained at home until nineteen years of age, having received but little education, as there were no free schools in his native State at that time. Besides this he would not have been able to attend if there had been, as his father died when he was but eight years old and he had to work hard to assist his mother in supporting the family. At the age of nineteen he married Minerva Woodburn, a native of Tennessee, whose parents were natives of North Carolina. He built a house near the old home and still continued to run the farm. He remained on the old place until 1860, when he went to Arkansas, remaining there for about one year, and then, as his political principles were not the same as those of the majority of the people of that State, he had to leave. He then came to Illinois and settled in Johnson County in 1861, and in August, 1862, he enlisted in Company K, One Hundred and Twentieth Illinois Infantry, remaining until the close of the war, when he was honorably discharged at Camp Butler, September 13, 1865. He was at the siege of Vicksburg, in the battle of Guntown, and in the fight at East Port, on the Tennessee, and was an active and true-hearted soldier all through the war.
Our subject's wife died October 14, 1862, and he afterward married Amanda Cornish, who was born in North Carolina February 8, 1850. He has fifteen children living: Charlotta A., Henry M., Lizzie B., Sarah, Leaffy and Woodson S., Jr., all of whom were by the first wife; and by the second, Sophronia E., John, Alice, James, Dallas, Mattie, Thomas, Granville and Frederick. He has recently purchased one hundred and twenty-three and a-half acres of land in Pope County, eighty-three and a-half acres of which are on section 12, and forty acres on section 4. This land is five miles southeast of Ozark, and he expects to make that farm his home in the future. In his religious views he is liberal, and he always votes the Republican ticket.
Extracted 16 Dec 2016 by Norma Hass from 1893 Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois, page 553.
