Appalachian Figures
On a November day in 1829, in a hill country courthouse town not far from the Cumberland River, a baby boy named Shelby Moore Cullom came into the world. Most history books remember him as an Illinois politician, a longtime United States senator, and a key architect of federal railroad regulation and the Lincoln Memorial. Yet the paper trail of his life, from bank notes to obituaries, never stops reminding us where he began. He was born in Monticello in Wayne County, Kentucky, part of the Appalachian borderland that fed people, ideas, and ambitions into the Old Northwest.
For Appalachian historians that origin story matters. Cullom spent almost all of his conscious life in Illinois, but the family that shaped him was part of the same tide of Maryland and Virginia migrants who pushed into Wayne County in the early republic. Local histories of Elk Spring Valley and Wayne County genealogy compilations still mark the marriage of Richard Northcraft Cullom and Elizabeth “Betsy” Coffey and note, in passing, that one of their children would become governor of Illinois and a United States senator.
Seen from Monticello, the story of Shelby Moore Cullom is not only about a Midwestern lawmaker. It is also about how an Appalachian family carried border state politics, anti-slavery convictions, and a sense of public duty out of southern Kentucky and into the cornfields, courtrooms, and committee rooms of the nineteenth century United States.
Wayne County roots
Biographical reference works agree on the basic facts. Shelby Moore Cullom was born on November 22, 1829, in Wayne County, Kentucky, generally specified as Monticello. His parents, Richard Northcraft Cullom and Elizabeth Coffey, had married in Wayne County a decade earlier and were part of a sprawling Coffey and Cullom network that stretched back to Maryland and North Carolina.
The family was thoroughly entangled with politics. An older relative, William Cullom, whose story this site has explored separately, left Elk Spring Valley for Tennessee and became a Whig congressman from Carthage on the Cumberland River. Another kinsman, Alvan Cullom, served Tennessee in both Congress and the state courts. Prosopographical references like The Political Graveyard and congressional biographies keep the three men together on the page, tracing a clan that produced multiple officeholders from the same Wayne County roots.
Shelby himself left no detailed description of Monticello’s streets, but his memoir, written late in life, remembers Kentucky as a slave state and his father as a man who could not assent to that system. “Kentucky was a slave State, and my father did not believe in slavery,” he wrote in Fifty Years of Public Service, before explaining that this conviction pushed the family to resettle in a free state.
Local history reinforces that picture. Wayne County compilations describe Elk Spring Valley and Monticello as communities where small farmers, slaveholding professionals, and migrants from the upper South mingled along emerging roads and post routes. In those narratives, the marriage of Richard Cullom and Elizabeth Coffey appears as one more link between Coffey hill farmers and the rising Cullom politicians, with the future Illinois senator mentioned almost as an aside.
From Kentucky ridges to Illinois prairie
When Shelby was still an infant, his parents acted on the decision that had been building in his father’s mind. In 1830 the Culloms joined the stream of families who crossed the Ohio River into Illinois. Primary sources do not give us the exact route from Monticello to the prairies, but the Papers of Abraham Lincoln biography and Cullom’s own recollections agree that they settled in Tazewell County in central Illinois that year.
In Fifty Years of Public Service, Cullom paints a vivid picture of that new landscape. His father and two brothers-in-law entered land in the same part of Tazewell County, threw up log cabins near a little stream then called Mud Creek, and rode out the famous “deep snow” winter of 1830–1831. He remembered seeing wild deer browsing within sight of the cabin door and trudging long distances to a one-room log schoolhouse with no desks and rough plank benches. Surviving pages show him working as a farm hand, teaching a country school for a few months, and then borrowing his father’s ox teams to break prairie in order to earn enough money for further schooling.
Those passages matter for Appalachian history because they show a Wayne County family replanting itself in another frontier setting rather than in a polished town. The young man from Monticello grew up in a community where many neighbors were also from Kentucky and other southern states, a fact he later blamed for the region’s sympathy with the South in the years before the Civil War. He learned to navigate a world where Kentucky-born Whigs tried to build a free state while carrying cultural habits from the upper South.
Springfield, Lincoln, and a Kentucky-born Whig
By the early 1850s Cullom had decided that life as a farmer was not for him. His memoir and multiple biographical sketches agree that in October 1853 he went to Springfield, Illinois, to read law. On his father’s advice he sought out Abraham Lincoln, already a prominent Whig attorney and family friend. The Papers of Abraham Lincoln project notes that Lincoln, often away on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, recommended that the younger man study in the office of John T. Stuart and Benjamin Edwards so that he would have constant supervision.
Cullom studied there for two years, was admitted to the bar in 1855, and in that same year won election as Springfield’s city attorney. His own recollections show how much he admired Lincoln’s skill in the courtroom. He remembered watching Lincoln defend murder cases and recalled his father hauling the congressional candidate around Tazewell County in a carriage during the 1846 campaign. Those stories, told by a man who had once been a boy on the edge of the crowd, place a Kentucky-born farmhand at the heart of Lincoln’s Illinois world.
From there Cullom moved steadily upward in state politics. The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and related reference works list service in the Illinois House of Representatives in 1856, 1860–1861, and 1873–1874, with terms as Speaker in 1861 and 1873. In those years he was a Kentucky-born Whig turned Republican shepherding an equally mixed constituency of native Midwesterners and former southerners through Civil War and Reconstruction.
Governor of Illinois and a reformer with Kentucky roots
Illinois voters sent Cullom to Washington once as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He served three consecutive terms from 1865 to 1871, representing an Illinois district but bringing a border-state sensibility to Reconstruction debates. A surviving pamphlet of his January 1867 House speech on Reconstruction, preserved through HathiTrust and other digital collections, shows him arguing about how to treat the former Confederate states, although the finer points of his position require closer reading than this sketch allows.
After a period back in state politics, Cullom returned to statewide office as governor. The National Governors Association biography and early twentieth century Illinois histories place his inauguration on January 8, 1877, and note that he served until early 1883. They credit his administration with establishing the Illinois State Board of Health, creating a bureau of labor statistics, organizing a state fish commission, and helping to revise tax laws in ways that eventually eliminated the state debt.
Those initiatives may sound dry, but their documents are rich primary sources. Governor’s messages to the General Assembly, available through state digital archives and microfilmed collections, lay out his views on public health, labor, and the proper relationship between state government and corporate power. Annual reports of the new State Board of Health for 1877 and 1878 carry letters addressed to “His Excellency, Shelby M. Cullom,” acknowledging his role in backing a medical licensing system that tried, however imperfectly, to protect patients from untrained practitioners.
For readers in Wayne County and the wider Appalachian region, these documents show an emigrant son of Monticello helping to build the infrastructure of a modern state far from the ridges of his birth, while still operating in networks of Kentucky and southern migrants who dominated parts of Illinois politics.
Railroads, the Interstate Commerce Act, and mountains at a distance
Cullom resigned the governorship in early 1883 after the Illinois legislature elected him to the United States Senate. He would serve there for thirty years, from March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1913, winning reelection four times and becoming what later obituaries and reference works called Illinois’s longest-serving senator.
In Washington he became most closely associated with railroad regulation. Political science biographies and the Quill Project summary trace his repeated chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, his leadership of a select committee that investigated railroad practices, and his central role in drafting the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. That act created the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first permanent federal regulatory agency, and tried to curb rate discrimination and unfair practices by railroads that crossed state lines.
From an Appalachian perspective his work on interstate commerce deserves careful attention. The same trunk lines that ran across Illinois eventually threaded through the Cumberlands to coalfields in eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The rules that Cullom and his colleagues hammered out in congressional hearings and committee rooms shaped the rates those railroads could charge mine operators, merchants, and farmers across the region. While his committees listened most closely to Midwestern shippers and railroad executives, their decisions helped frame the economic world in which Appalachian coal camps and county seats operated.
The Congressional Record preserves Cullom’s own words on these questions. Volumes from the late 1880s and 1890s contain his speeches introducing railroad bills, debating the reach of federal authority, and responding to petitions. They also show him branching into foreign affairs and other subjects as his seniority grew.
Banker, signatures on paper money, and a tangible trail
Cullom’s career did not unfold only in legislative halls. Bank and currency records provide a different kind of primary source, connecting his name to objects that collectors can still hold. The Society of Paper Money Collectors’ BankLookup database lists him as president of the State National Bank of Springfield, Illinois, during the 1870s and early 1880s. Officer rosters compiled from federal records show him paired with various cashiers and identify him as a bank note signer.
Nineteenth century Illinois histories likewise describe him as president or nominal head of the State National Bank, noting that he was a stockholder and that government deposits often passed through the institution. Surviving national bank notes from the period bear engraved and handwritten versions of his name, a reminder that the boy born in Wayne County grew up to sign the currency that circulated through Springfield and beyond.
Taken together, these financial records add texture to the more familiar narrative of offices held. They show an Appalachian migrant not only debating policy but also occupying the social world of boardrooms and bank counters, an environment common to many of the region’s former residents who made their fortunes elsewhere.
The Lincoln Memorial and a Kentucky-born president’s image
In the last phase of his career, Cullom turned much of his energy toward honoring the man whose advice had helped launch him as a lawyer. Multiple sources credit him as the driving force behind the Lincoln Memorial Commission. Quill Project and National Governors Association biographies, along with a House of Representatives historical sketch, emphasize that he chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for a decade, then became chair and resident commissioner of the Lincoln Memorial Commission in 1913 and 1914.
A popular history blog on the memorial, drawing on congressional records and the Library of Congress, describes how Cullom introduced five separate bills between 1901 and 1908 to authorize a national Lincoln monument, losing each time to opposition from powerful House Speaker Joseph Cannon. His sixth attempt finally passed in 1910, clearing the way for the commission to select a design and site.
By the time those decisions were made Cullom was elderly, but photographs from the Brady-Handy collection and the frontispiece portrait in Fifty Years of Public Service show him still active, a white-bearded figure who had outlived most of Lincoln’s contemporaries. It is a striking image: a man born in Monticello in the hill country of Wayne County, Kentucky, helping to fix the memory of another Kentucky-born lawyer and president in marble on the banks of the Potomac.
Death, burial, and memory in two regions
Cullom published Fifty Years of Public Service in 1911, signing the preface in Washington, D.C., and framing the book as a reflection on a long life rather than as a campaign document. A few years later, on January 28, 1914, he died in Washington. The National Governors Association biography and modern cemetery records agree that his body was taken back to Springfield and buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, the same resting place as Abraham Lincoln.
The copy of his memoir digitized by the Internet Archive contains a telling artifact. On one of the final pages, an owner has pasted a newspaper clipping titled “Cullom’s body taken home,” an Associated Press dispatch that narrates the return of the senator’s remains to Illinois. In that small piece of ephemera, home means Springfield, the city where he built his law practice and political base.
Yet genealogical notes, Wayne County local histories, and family sketches published in Tennessee and Louisiana never let readers forget his Kentucky origin. They refer to him as “also a native of Wayne County, Kentucky,” trace his line back to Richard Northcraft and Elizabeth Coffey, and connect him to cousins who remained in southern Kentucky or crossed into Tennessee.
For Appalachian historians this double memory is important. The United States senator that Springfield claims as its own also belongs to the story of how families from Elk Spring Valley and Monticello scattered across the nineteenth century map, carrying with them a mix of anti-slavery convictions, Whig economic ideas, and a habit of public service. His life reminds us that the region’s influence did not stop at the edges of coalfields or mountain counties. It reached into the corridors of power where railroads were regulated, public health laws drafted, and national monuments imagined.
Sources & Further Reading
Shelby M. Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service: Personal Recollections of Shelby M. Cullom, Senior United States Senator from Illinois (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1911). Widely available in full text through Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, this memoir is the single most important first-person source for his early life in Kentucky, his move to Illinois, and his recollections of Abraham Lincoln and later political battles. Project Gutenberg+2Project Gutenberg+2
“Shelby M. Cullom” correspondence and papers, Illinois History and Lincoln Collections, University of Illinois. The main manuscript collection for his life and work, including letters, speeches, and clippings that go far beyond the polished narrative of his memoir. Finding aids highlight materials related to his Springfield law practice, gubernatorial years, and Senate career. Wikipedia+1
Messages and proclamations as Governor of Illinois, especially the inaugural message to the Thirtieth General Assembly (January 8, 1877) and later communications on public health, labor, and taxation, preserved in Illinois state documents and accessible through state digital archives and library microfilm. These official papers flesh out his public philosophy and his role in creating institutions like the Illinois State Board of Health. Cincinnati Public Library+2Wikimedia Commons+2
Speeches in Congress, including his January 28, 1867 House speech on Reconstruction and later Senate debates on railroad regulation and interstate commerce. The Congressional Globe and Congressional Record, available through the Library of Congress’s “A Century of Lawmaking” and govinfo, preserve these texts and allow readers to track his positions across nearly half a century. HathiTrust+1
State National Bank of Springfield records and numismatic databases. The Society of Paper Money Collectors’ BankLookup entries for National Bank Charter 1733 and for banker Shelby Moore Cullom confirm his roles as president and bank note signer and supply independent documentation of his birth in Monticello, Kentucky, and death in Washington, D.C. Bank Lookup+2Bank Lookup+2
Obituaries, memorial sketches, and cemetery records. Early 1914 newspaper obituaries, the Associated Press clipping “Cullom’s body taken home” bound into some copies of Fifty Years of Public Service, and modern transcriptions such as the Find A Grave memorial and Springfield cemetery records provide details on his death, funeral, and interment at Oak Ridge Cemetery. Find A Grave+3Internet Archive+3National Governors Association+3
Papers of Abraham Lincoln, “Cullom, Shelby M.” A modern scholarly biographical sketch that synthesizes census returns, legal records, and contemporary press coverage to outline his movement from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Tazewell County, Illinois, his legal education, and his public career. Papers of Abraham Lincoln+1
National Governors Association, “Gov. Shelby Moore Cullom.” Concise official biography, based on state records, summarizing his governorship, later Senate service, and roles as Regent of the Smithsonian Institution and as chairman and commissioner of the Lincoln Memorial Commission. National Governors Association+1
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and U.S. House of Representatives “History, Art & Archives” entries for “CULLOM, Shelby Moore.” These federal reference works provide a reliable skeleton of offices held, committee assignments, and recommended primary sources, including the major biography Shelby M. Cullom, Prairie State Republican by James Warren Neilson and William A. Pitkin’s article “Shelby M. Cullom: Presidential Prospect.” Political Graveyard+3History, Art & Archives+3Papers of Abraham Lincoln+3
Quill Project, “Shelby M. Cullom,” and related political science biographies. These summaries emphasize his committee chairmanships on Interstate Commerce and Foreign Relations, his years as Republican Conference chair, and his central role in the Interstate Commerce Act and Lincoln Memorial Commission. Quill Project+1
Augusta Phillips Johnson, A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800–1900, along with genealogical compilations on the Coffey and Cullom families. These local and family histories ground Cullom’s story in the Elk Spring Valley and Monticello community, documenting the marriage of Richard Northcraft Cullom and Elizabeth Coffey and noting their son’s later prominence. Seeking My Roots+2Coffey+2
Political Graveyard “Cullom family” entry and related cemetery and genealogy pages. Useful for tracing the wider Cullom clan across Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, and Louisiana and for situating Shelby Moore Cullom among uncles, cousins, and descendants who also held public office or moved along similar migration paths. Political Graveyard+2LAGENWeb+2