Biography of Francis Clinton Cullers

By Joseph Celentano, Historical Research Committee

Sharon Cullers McCrystal wrote this article for the TCMM in (2002). She is in the process of extensive genealogy research into her family and has consented to share the Cullers story with us.

The Cullers Family is related by marriage to our own Ed McDow. Elmer Ernest McDow, (Ed's Father) married Laura Belle Cullers (Ed's mother).

Francis Clinton Cullers was born in Luray, Page County, Virginia on September 10, 1837 to William Henry Cullers and Catharine Huffman. Francis came to the Pacific Coast and the Mother Lode in 1853, by the familiar Isthmus of Panama route. Directing his steps toward the southern mines, he began digging at Yankee Hill, near Columbia, and remained there for the almost unprecedented time of sixteen years!

His next and final location was in Confidence.  Francis married Anna Maria Eastwood in Sonora on July 4, 1867. At the time he was 31 years old and she was 16. Anne Marie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Their children were William Clinton, Henry Milton, George (nmn), Laura Belle, Francis Robert and Leroy (Roy) Charles. Leroy (Roy) Cullers owned a grocery store in Tuolumne.

Sharon states her father, Charles Clinton Cullers, was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a genetic condition that is a rheumatic disease that causes arthritis of the spine and sacroiliac joints and can cause inflammation of the eyes, lungs, and heart valves. It varies from intermittent episodes of back pain that occur throughout life to a severe chronic disease that attacks the spine, peripheral joints and other body organs.

It is of interest to note that Francis Clinton's son, William Clinton Cullers was so crippled with arthritis that his mother, Anne Marie, moved in with him and took care of him. William never married.

Francis Clinton Cullers spent the first years of his residence in Columbia, where he was engaged in mining, which occupation, like most of the pioneers, he followed until he died. From Columbia, he moved to Arastraville, where the last years of his life were spent. Francis named the mining settlement of Arastraville, which is where the Ponderosa Hills subdivision is now located. An arrastra is a process for grinding ore to get out the gold. A circle is built of stones and is filled in with ore. In the middle is a pole to which is attached a heavy weight which, when turned by a mule or an ox, ground the ore. In the end they used water to flush out the ground ore and the gold remained.

Francis Clinton Cullers enjoyed the esteem of his associates to a remarkable degree. He held the office of Worthy Chief of the large and flourishing fraternal organization, “Lodge of Good Templars.” Francis was a man who enjoyed the respect and good will of all who knew him, as he was considered honest, and trustworthy. He died July 6, 1905 and is buried at Carter's Cemetery in Tuolumne Township.

On another interesting note, the Cullers family is also related to the Sam and Mary Rozier family by marriage. Anne Marie Eastwood's mother was Margaret Doyle Eastwood Rozier.

Another story told to Sharon Cullers McChrystal by Ed McDow was about Ed's favorite uncle, Henry Milton Cullers. “He could play the violin by ear. He could play piano. He taught me how to hunt and told me to shoot the deer in its eye. One day he got twenty thousand dollars in gold out of the Hard Time Mine in Arastraville when they first started mining. The mine went underground for ten miles. The vein ran out and his wife, Grace Ann Parkinson Cullers, grabbed him by the nape of the neck one day and told him they were moving. He got a job managing orchards in Placerville.”

Return to www.TuolumneMuseum.org