In the year 2014 the small balance of about £70 remaining in a little known charity called the "McCulloch Bequest for the Poor of Durness" was absorbed into a trust fund called the "Highland Charities Trust" along with some other small charities whose funds had reduced to levels that made them uneconomic to administer individually. In the new combined fund this charity became known simply as the "Durness Poor Fund", so the name of McCulloch disappeared from the records. Not that the records ever revealed much about him, but McCulloch, baptised Hugh in October 1793 to Kenneth McCulloch and his wife Barbara, in the parish of Durness, County of Sutherland, Scotland played a significant role in the history of the State of California in the United States of America. Over the following pages we will explain what we know of his life, in particular his founding of the Californian Hide and Tallow Trade in 1822 which was the very beginning of the commercial economy
All the way from Cape Wrath - the Story of Hugh McCulloch aka Luis Macala