Coopersville Observer, May 21, 1920

Ottawa County lost its eldest citizen Sunday afternoon when Thomas J. McCulloch, aged one hundred years, died suddenly at the home of his son, Charles, near Berlin. Death is believed to have been caused by old age.

The end came peacefully as he was sitting in his chair and while his daughter-in-law was filling out an application for him to receive an increase in pension from the government in recognition of his services for the country during the Civil War. He had apparently been in his usual good health all day although on Saturday he complained of not feeling so well. He went for a walk about the yard on Friday.

Mr. McCulloch was born in Monroe County, New York, on January 20, 1820, and came to Michigan in 1854, settling in Berlin. He was a blacksmith there for several years. He is survived by the son, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Funeral services were held at the Berlin Church at 2 o’clock Tuesday afternoon.

Berlin Briefs, February 16, 1906

Thomas McCulloch, a pioneer of Ottawa County, who worked in a blacksmith shop in Berlin in 1854, recently shod a horse on his eighty-sixth birthday. He learned the blacksmithing trade in his youth when the smithies had to split the bar to make the horse shoe. He served three years in the Civil War as blacksmith in the Second Michigan Cavalry.