A Widow's Second Wedding: At Her Father-in-law's House Twice?

On February 19, 1857, a Methodist minister named Joel Turrentine traveled out to a home in Union County, Arkansas, to perform a wedding. The groom was William R. Morgan, about twenty-five. The bride was recorded simply as "Mrs. Sarah McCullar," also about twenty-five.^[1] Nothing about the ceremony itself was unusual. Widows commonly kept their married name when they remarried; that was simply the custom of the time. What catches the eye is where the wedding took place: not at the bride's own family home, as was customary, but at the residence of a man named Benjamin McCullar.

Why would a woman already named McCullar be marrying, for a second time, in another McCullar's house?

Benjamin McCullar was a prosperous Union County farmer. Digging into his family turned up a son named George, who appears in Benjamin's 1850 household but was already dead by the time Benjamin's estate was settled in 1863; his share passed to "the Legal Representatives of George McCullar" instead of to George himself. If this Sarah were George's widow, still living under her father-in-law's roof, a second wedding in that same house would make perfect sense. Proving it meant tracking down every scrap of paper Union County's courthouse still had.

Here's what turned up.

Five years before the Morgan wedding, on January 8, 1852, George McCullar had married Sarah Ann Harper at Benjamin McCullar's residence. Same house. Two different ministers, five years apart, had each performed a wedding for a "Sarah McCullar" at the same address.

Then came the document that clinched it. Just three months after marrying Morgan, Sarah and her new husband signed papers relinquishing "all our right, title and claim, or possibility of any title or claim" to a piece of property, handing it over to Benjamin McCullar. Why would a brand-new bride need to formally give up a claim like that so soon after her wedding, unless she already held one? The most likely explanation: Sarah walked into her marriage to Morgan already holding a widow's stake in George McCullar's estate.

Benjamin's own probate records confirmed it. When his estate was divided in 1863, George McCullar was listed among the sons who had already died. Sarah's first husband really was gone, and had been for years.

No single document uses the word "widow." But four separate records, spanning eleven years, all point in the same direction.

One more piece makes the whole scene click into place. After his first wife died, Benjamin McCullar remarried, this time to Malinda Harper. Malinda was Sarah's younger sister.

So the wedding on February 19, 1857, wasn't just Sarah's second trip to the altar in Benjamin McCullar's house. It was a house full of her own family, both sides at once: her late husband's father under the same roof, and her sister very likely standing beside her as a witness. When Reverend Turrentine rode out that February day, he had no way of knowing he was recording one chapter of a story, and that it would take four separate documents and a good deal of digging to piece the reason for it back together. Of course, we do not yet know about the groom, William R. Morgan, and his involvement with the McCullar family. Stay tuned!

1. Union County, Arkansas, "Union Marriage Records (1847-1875, 1866-1875), 176, William R. Morgan- Mrs. Sarah McCullar, 19 Feb 1857, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DZ49-43C?view=fullText&keywords=Wm+R.+Morgan%2CArkansas%2CUnion&lang=en : accessed 10 July 2026); Full Text search > McCullar, citing Union County Clerk, El Dorado, Marriage Record Book B (1850-66), IGN No. 004315616, image 305 of 703.↩︎