My Genealogy Hound

WYANT O. GULLION was born on Mill Creek, in Carroll County, Ky., near the present village of English, October 11, 1812. His parents were Joseph and Margaret (Wyant) Gullion, who were natives of Pennsylvania, and of Irish-Dutch origin. Jeremiah Gullion, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, settled at Frankfort, Ky., at a very early day. His son, Joseph, the father of Wyant O., settled on the Kentucky River, at the mouth of Eagle Creek, in Carroll County, in 1794. Wyant O. Gullion was reared in the vicinity of the place of his birth, and attended the subscription schools taught in his neighborhood when quite young. When about thirteen years old he was attacked with white swelling in his leg, was confined to his home, and most of the time to his room, for nearly four years; during which time he studied a great deal, and without the aid of an instructor prepared himself for teaching. He taught school a few years in Carroll County, having to go on crutches for several years. In 1836 he moved with his father to Boone County, Ind. Here he taught the first school ever taught in Lebanon. After a few years spent in teaching, and in surveying in the then wild lands of that section, he returned to Kentucky, and engaged in the wheelwright’s trade in his native county, which trade he had learned when a boy. In 1845 he went to Alabama, and settled at Eutaw, where he lived until June, 1846, when he enlisted in the Mexican war, belonging to Col. M. V. Thompson’s regiment. He was the last man to leave Monterey after the capture of the city. He entered the army as a private, afterward served in the quartermaster’s department, and remained one year in the service after the close of the war. In 1849 he left the army and went to California, where he spent two years in mining. Returning to his native county, with a few thousand dollars in gold, he was there married, April 6, 1852, to Maria L. Whitaker, a native of Harrison County, Ky., daughter of Edmund Asbury and Sidney (Dean) Whitaker, and granddaughter of Rev. Josiah Whitaker, a widely known pioneer Methodist preacher. Six children were born to this union, viz.: Edmund A., Joseph E., Margaret F., Ernest Wyant, Mollie and Carrie, the last two now deceased. In 1856 the subject of this sketch was elected sheriff of Carroll County, as the Democratic nominee, defeating Robert Tate, the candidate of the American party, by thirteen votes. Serving two years, he was not a candidate for re-election. For a few years prior to and succeeding his election to the sheriffalty, he was engaged in the mercantile business in Worthville, Ky., but much of his life was spent on his farm on Eagle Creek, two miles east of that town. In August, 1874, Mr. Gullion was elected clerk of the circuit court of Carroll County, as a Democrat; was re-elected for three terms of six years each, and was holding the office at the time of his death. On June 11, 1887, after an illness of only a few days, he passed away at his home in Carrollton, aged seventy-four years and eight months, and was buried in that town. Mr. Gullion was strictly a self-made man. He was very popular, and made friends wherever he went. He held the office of justice of the peace for several years in Carroll County, and held the same office many years before in Indiana and California. Politically he was a Democrat. His first vote was for Gen. Jackson for President in 1832, and he continued to vote the Democratic ticket as long as he lived. He was an uncompromising friend of temperance throughout his life, and took an active part in all movements, the object of which was to secure local prohibition, and he never drank intoxicating liquors. He united with the Methodist Episcopal Church South, at Worthville, in 1857, and remained a member until he died.