Profiles

George McCulloch, quarry master and contractor, became a Proprietor of Ground in the Glasgow Necropolis on 12 June 1849. At a cost of £12 12s 0d, George purchased lair 107 in Compartment Sigma. His son in law, Robert McCallum at the same time purchased the adjacent lair, Sigma 108.  George is buried in lair 107, along with his wife, two of his five children and a grandson and his wife. 

Life and Family of George McCulloch

George was the eldest child of James McCulloch (Senior) and Agnes Whitelaw and born in Cumbernauld, Dunbartonshire on 12 October 1791. He was baptised there on 6 November 1791. As best can be determined, the parents of James McCulloch (Senior) were George McCulloch and Margaret Findlay, also of Cumbernauld. George (son of James, Senior), had two brothers, James (Junior) who also became a contractor in Glasgow and John, who followed his father, farming at Woodend, Lanarkshire. 

James McCulloch (Senior) gave his family a good start in life. Born in 1768 in Cumbernauld, he went on to serve an apprenticeship as a brewer in Glasgow with John and Robert Tennant. This allowed him to become a Maltman and a Burgess and Guild Brother of Glasgow, 29 July 1805. He purchased property in Parkhouse Lane (off Duke Street) and in the 1820s was operating variously as a carter and then as a dairyman (Parkhouse Lane, Ladywell). About 1832 he moved to Woodend Farm, to the north east of Glasgow. James McCulloch (Senior) died in Woodend, parish of New Monkland, Lanarkshire, 9 January 1851, aged about 82. In his will he conveniently set out his family, his three sons, George, James (Junior) and John and their wives and families. His wife, Agnes Whitelaw, (who was remembered in the name of the third daughter of Agnes and Robert McCallum) died 13 October 1835.Both James (Senior) and his wife were laid to rest in the New Burying Ground adjacent to the Glasgow Cathedral.  

Tracking George McCulloch through the Glasgow Postal Directories, he first appears in 1822 as “grocer, Ladywell St.” It shortly becomes, “Park Lane, Duke Street” and he is a spirit dealer along with being a grocer. In the 1841-42 directory he is listed as a “Contractor, 22 Park Lane,” moving in 1855-56 to Wester Craig House (off Ark Lane from Duke Street). In 1862-63 George is listed at Broompark House, off Duke Street, one of the mansions or country houses such as Golfhill, Dunchattan, and Craig Park, that were built across the estates to the east of the Necropolis. By 1867-68 he had moved to 4 Craig Park Terrace in the growing suburb of Dennistoun. 

George had married Jane Thomson, daughter of William Thomson, farmer, in Glasgow on 31 May 1818. They had five children, commencing with James (Tertius) 18 March 1819, twins Agnes and Margaret, 22 April, 1824, Jean, 13 August, 1832 and George (Junior), 23 December 1838. Margaret sadly lived little more than a year dying in June 1825. Agnes married Robert McCallum, quarrier and contractor in 1842 and had thirteen children, living in Duke Street and on the Gare Loch. After Robert died in 1869 she lived in Dollar, Clackmannanshire, dying in 1880 and was buried next to her parents with her husband in lair 108, Compartment Sigma. Jean married Thomas Gray in 1854 and had a son, John Gray. Thomas was a mason but appears to have died relatively soon after his son was born. Jean lived until 1907. Youngest son, George (Junior) died age 30 of a heart condition. 

George McCulloch followed his father and became a Maltman 16 October 1838, becoming Visitor (Chairman) of the Maltmen in 1845. Here he was following his brother, James (Junior), who was Visitor in 1843 and 44 and was also a contractor in Glasgow, living in Park House Lane in one of the properties his father, James (Senior) had purchased. On 4 November 1842, George’s eldest son, James (Tertius) became a Maltman and was Visitor in 1848. James (Tertius) went on to be the Collector at the Trades Hall, married Susan Renwick in Glasgow in 1841 and after she died moved to Melbourne, Victoria. There he did well in business and in politics, becoming premier of the colony and was knighted as Sir James McCulloch in 1871. Retiring to England he died in 1893 and was buried in lair 96, Compartment Sigma, not far from his parents. His life is set out in several Dictionaries of Biography (National, Australian, Oxford). 

The Merchants House Quarry

George McCulloch developed a close connection with the Glasgow Necropolis through being the tenant of the Merchants House quarry and living at Wester Craig House (off Ark Lane from Duke Street).  At least from 1855, George, according to the Valuation Roll was the tenant, paying £250 rent per annum for the quarry. The quarry was known by a number of names, Wellpark Quarry (Valuation Roll), Ladywell Quarry (Ordinance Survey maps), Town Quarry (Glasgow maps) and Westercraig Quarry after its location on the old estate of Westercraig and adjacent to Wester Craig House (where George lived from 1855 to 1861). Around 1862 the operation of the Merchants Quarry was taken over by Alexander Fail, who also operated the Craig Park quarry. George Blair in his 1857 “Sketches of Glasgow Necropolis” briefly describes the quarry. He notes the workable rock in the quarry as “about sixty feet” and that walls were being built for the enclosure of a significant part of the quarry into the Necropolis.

In 1866 George McCulloch retired as a contractor, with the Glasgow Herald advertising the “Public Sale of Horses, Carts and Harness, Lorries etc … by a Contractor retiring from Business … Removed to Parkhouse Lane (off Duke Street), for convenience of sale.” George was seventy-five years of age. 

At Rest in the Necropolis

George McCulloch died 10 October 1873 at 4 Craig Park Terrace. He left an estate of £1285 14s 9d, having sold off his properties some years earlier. His widow, Jane Thomson McCulloch died the following year on 1 August 1874. 

Their daughter Margaret who had died young in 1825 before the Necropolis opened was remembered on the headstone. Their children, Jean (d. 1907), widow of Thomas Gray, and George (Junior) (d. 1869) were buried with them. Later in 1942 and 1944, their grandson John Gray and his wife Agnes Guthrie Hayman were buried in the lair with their own headstone. John, a civil engineer, worked for the North British Railway Company in Glasgow. On 1 November 1894 he married a distant cousin, Agnes Guthrie Hayman at the Windsor Hotel, Glasgow. They lived in Sea Tower, Racecourse Road, Ayr.