MCCULLOUGH, MARGARET JANE RIDDELL (1831–1910). Margaret Jane Riddell McCullough, early Galveston civic leader, daughter of James and Margaret (Wigton) Riddell, was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, on August 25, 1831, and lived at the home of her grandparents in Spruce Creek after her mother's death. In 1851 she married John McCullough, founder in 1840 of the First Presbyterian Church in Galveston. The couple spent several years in Dresden, Ohio, near Zanesville, before moving to Texas by wagon in 1859 to live at a ranch near Double Horn, Burnet County. Residents accustomed to the harsh conditions of frontier life remembered that Mrs. McCullough brought with her a grand piano, furs, and a silver tea service. In 1869 the family moved to a home at Prairie Lea, Caldwell County, where John died on January 9, 1870. Margaret took her nine children to Galveston to join her brother, John Riddell. At one time she kept fifteen boarders and in 1895 taught Sunday school. By 1883 she had joined the Ladies Aid Society, an institution dedicated to relieving the city's poor. She was elected president of the organization in 1890 and served until her death, in December 1910.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Women's Culture and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880–1920 (Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 1990). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
