Nancy McCullough
Nancy McCullough lived and died in Neshoba County, Mississippi. She was the wife of John McCullough, and she died at her home in the county about 1853. Her maiden name is not known.
She owned an enslaved woman, Manda, in her own name. Mississippi's law of 1839 allowed a married woman to hold enslaved people as her separate property, apart from her husband's, and that is why her estate needed an administrator of its own. Manda stayed in John McCullough's household after Nancy died and had two daughters there, Dinus and Rhoda.
John died in April 1861. A month later, on 28 May 1861, their son Mathew went before the Probate Court at Philadelphia. He swore that Nancy had died "some where about eight years ago", that she was "a married woman", and that he was "the son of said Nancy McCullough deceased, and the oldest one now living". He asked to be made administrator. His bond was set at four thousand dollars, with Manah Mayo as his surety, who signed by mark.
On 10 June Mathew asked the court to sell Manda and her children, because they could not be divided in kind among the heirs. The petition names everyone entitled to a share: Mathew, the eldest living son; Marion; John; Benjamin, a minor; Nancy, wife of Cornelius Harris; William, a minor; and four minor grandchildren, Elizabeth Benson, Greenbury McCullough, Nancy Catherine McCullough and Ruth A. McCullough, for whom Jane McCullough signed as natural guardian. The appraisers met at her old home on 16 July 1861 and valued Manda and the two girls at $1,600. They also listed an iron gray colt, a sorrel filly, a mouse colored mule, a gray mare and colt and a sorrel mare with a blazed face.
That inventory was sworn on 22 July 1861, three months after Mississippi left the Union. The court was dividing the family's property in the first summer of the war.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Nancy McCullough (d. 1853)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/nancy-mccullough-1853-b9d1f3.