Eliza Cullembaugh of Calvert County

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Eliza Cullumbaugh

The following information was sent to me by Nancy O'Conner, <NOCONNOR@CINCI.RR.COM>. It comes from a small booklet written by a relative some 20 years ago based mostly on family tradition and an early bible. Since Eliza married in Calvert County, she wonders if the Cullumbaugh was actually Cullember or if Cullember started out as Cullumbaugh. It is possible that they were going to Maryland because of some unknown family connection.

        Eliza Cullumbaugh, who became the wife of Maulden (or Malden) Baker, was born in Scotland, British Isles, in the year 1806. In 1809, her parents with her and two other sisters started to America. At that time, it took six weeks to make the trip, which had to be done, of course, in a sailing vessel. Owing to unsanitary conditions and the food used on the trip, an epidemic of cholera broke out on the ship and many died. The vessel was quarantined in the harbor at Baltimore, Maryland, for several weeks. The two parents died of the malady and were buried at sea. Eliza and her two sisters were "farmed out," that is taken by others of the colony and raised and, while they evidently remained in the same neighborhood, they likely bore different names and they eventually became separated. Eliza was reared by a family named "Clark." Little is known of her sisters nor of the families who took care of them. Owing to the lack of convenient correspondence, they were soon lost trace of them when Maulden and Eliza moved to Indiana.
    Maulden Baker and Eliza Cullumbaugh were married in Calvert County, Maryland on December 25, 1825, so reads the old Bible record. Further than that there is no written record. They lived there until the autumn of 1833 on or near the "Petuxin" River, which flows in the Chesapeake Bay about seven (?) miles from Baltimore. During the month of October 1833, they joined a colony of emigrants who were coming to Indiana to build new homes. They made the trip over the mountains and down the Ohio River to a landing place just down the river from Madison, Ind. From there they journeyed overland to the temporary Government Land Headquarters at Big Springs in Martin County Indiana. From there they located their new homes and many of them came to the "Hill Country" of Green and Monroe Counties and helped to establish the towns of Stanford, Solsberry, Newark, Bloomington and Bloomfield. Hence, also we have Maryland Ridge and Green County Chapel, which is the Methodist Episcopal Church standing nearly on the line between Monroe and Green counties, just about one mile west of Stanford, Ind.
        Grandfather Maulden spent much of his early life as a "fresh water sailor" on the Chesapeake Bay and also worked for the plantation owners in Western Maryland. He never owned a slave. It was in that vocation that he earned and saved the money on which he ventured Westward in 1833.
        He was a shoemaker for the colony and also his neighborhood in Indiana. I have some of his old tools yet. He became a licensed exhorter or local preacher in the Methodist Protestant Church.

Here's the information on the migration Eliza and Malden made from Maryland to Indiana with abolitionists and freed black slaves:
http://www.i69tour.org/mrc.html

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Valerie <cullumber01@yahoo.com>
All research and information is courtesy of June Clover Byrne

and is used here with her permission.

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