Thursday, December 18, 2014

Cullinas Boyd Hannah (1845-1919)

Portrait from the Official and Statistical Register of Mississippi, 1912.

    A two-term member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, Cullinas B. Hannah was a farmer based in Oktibbeha County for nearly all his life. Born on March 5, 1847, in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, Cullinas B. Hannah was the son of Caleb and Lydia Howe Hannah. A student in the "rural schools", Hannah was also a Civil War veteran, serving with Co. A, 27th Mississippi Infantry
  Cullinas B. Hannah married in 1873 to Celia Frances Hunt (1854-1878) and later had three children: Linny Leonora, Robert Lee, and Thomas Jefferson Hannah. In a slightly confusing aside note, Find-A-Grave lists a "C.B. Hannah" of Oktibbeha County as having a wife, Bettie (1854-1887), who died along with an infant son in January 1887. Could Bettie, in fact, be Celia, and did the Official Register of Mississippi confuse their names and dates of death? The answer remains a mystery!
   As a farmer based in the Oktibbeha County town of Sturgis, Hannah engaged in that vocation for all of his life, and in 1892 entered into his first term in the Mississippi State House of Representatives. At the end of his term in 1896, he returned to farming, and nearly a decade afterward won election to the Sturgis city council (serving from 1905-1906.)  In November 1911 he was returned to the state legislature, and during this session (1912-1916) sat on the house committees on Pensions, Eleemosynary Institutions, Ways and Means, Registrations and Elections, and Propositions and Grievances.
   At the conclusion of his term in 1916, Hannah returned to private life in Sturgis. He died there on March 10, 1919, five days after his seventy-fourth birthday. He was later interred at the Sturgis Cemetery under a headstone denoting his status as a Mason.

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