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From: "Mary Grabanski" <>
Subject: [NJGLOUCE-L] Newspaper article
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 09:54:12 -0500


Hi All,
I'm new to this list. I have this article with a little history.
It is an interview with my great-aunt, Alice Dunn McCullough. If anyone
recognizes any of the names mentioned in this article, I would
appreciate hearing from you. Thanks. Mary G.

Excerpt of an article published in the Wichita [KS] Eagle, written by
Victor Murdock, circa 1925:

STORY OF SIX OLD CHAIRS IN WICHITA WHICH CAME FROM
NEW JERSEY COLONY
Original Set of Rush-bottomed Antiques Which Came to Kansas in an Early
Day and Are Still Here

With Alice McCullough (Mrs. Richard) this morning I stood with respect
and admiration before an ancient rush-bottomed chair---one of those
simple colonial affairs which afforded the early American about the only
waking rest her ever had, and that at mealtime.
The chair Mrs. McCullough has, she has known all her life. It is one
of an original set of six and she knows where the other five are, for
the dispersal of the set has taken place during her life time which
covers a period of eighty-three years. An account of the career of
those chairs is as a thread running through the history of this part of
the United States.
Mrs. McCullough was born a Dunn, at Lockland, in Hamilton County, Ohio,
just outside Cincinnati. The Dunns were there early. They came from
Gloucester County, New Jersey and they had been early in Gloucester
County, too. How the Dunns came to Ohio is an interesting story in
itself. They must have followed into the wilderness a mighty man in
those days, the Reverend John Collins, a born Quaker destined to drive
the first stakes of the Methodist Church in the then "Northwest
Territory."
John Collins rode from Southern New Jersey into "The Northwest
Territory" in 1802. He was then thirty-three years old. Two years
later he preached the first Methodist sermon in Cincinnati to twelve
persons "in an upper room." A relative of John Collins, famous in his
era, was a great aunt of Mrs. McCullough. This was Mary Bailey Dunn.
She had the six rush-bottomed chairs from the Colonies. When she died
she left them to a relative, Sarah Dunn Scudder. When Sarah Dunn
Scudder died she left them to Mrs. McCullough.
Mr. and Mrs. McCullough came to Wichita in 1884 and the chairs came
with the family. Mrs. McCullough gave one of the chairs to her brother,
the late Lewis Dunn and his son Willis Dunn, Wichita, has it. Another
she gave to Collins Dunn, deceased, and his survivors have it.
A daughter, Gertrude McCullough Toler (Mrs. Ed. Toler) Anthony, Kansas,
was given one as were two members of the Dunn family here in Wichita.

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