Editing Benjamin McCulloch (section)

==Early life==
He was born November 11, 1811, in [[Rutherford County, Tennessee]], one of twelve children and the fourth son of Alexander McCulloch and Frances Fisher LeNoir. Benjamin's father Alexander, a [[Yale University]] graduate, was a descendant of Captain [[Nicolas Martiau]], the French Huguenot settler of Jamestown, Virginia and ancestor of President George Washington, and also had Scots-Irish ancestry. Alexander was also an officer on Brig. Gen. [[John Coffee]]'s staff during the [[Creek War]] of 1813 and 1814 in [[Alabama]] (and apparently at the [[Battle of New Orleans]] in 1815). His mother was a daughter of a prominent [[Virginia]]n [[Planter (American South)|planter]]. The McCulloch family had been wealthy, politically influential, and socially prominent in [[North Carolina]] before the [[American Revolution]], but Alexander had wasted much of his inheritance and was unable even to educate his sons. (Two of Ben's older brothers had briefly attended a school in Tennessee taught by their neighbor, [[Sam Houston]].) One of Ben's younger brothers was [[Henry Eustace McCulloch]], also a Confederate general officer. Another brother, Alexander, served in the Texas Revolution and as a captain in Mexico.

The McCulloch family, like many on the frontier, moved often by choice or necessity. In the twenty years following their move from North Carolina and Ben's birth, they lived in eastern Tennessee, [[Alabama]], and then western Tennessee. They finally settled at [[Dyersburg, Tennessee|Dyersburg]], where one of their closest neighbors was [[Davy Crockett]], a great influence on young Ben.

In 1834, McCulloch headed west. He reached St. Louis just too late to join the fur trappers headed for the mountains for the season. He then tried to join a freight company heading for [[Santa Fe, New Mexico|Santa Fe]] as a [[muleteer|muleskinner]], but was told they had a full complement. He moved on to [[Wisconsin]] to investigate lead-mining, but found all the best claims already staked by the large mining companies. In the fall of 1835, he returned to Tennessee to take up farming.