Author: Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist
Edgar Warren McCullers was born on February 6, 1894, in Johnston County, North Carolina, to Edgar B. and Alma L. McCullers. By 1900, the McCullers were living in Clayton, N.C., where Edgar W. McCullers’ father worked as a farmer. As of 1916, Edgar Warren McCullers was a sophomore at Trinity College in Durham, N.C. (present-day Duke University). By 1917, Edgar (or “Warren,” as he went by) had entered Trinity School of Law as a first-year student, and was a member of the Hesperian Literary Society and the Historical Society.
By 1917, Edgar had served two years in the North Carolina National Guard, with the rank of Private in the infantry. When Edgar registered for the draft in June 1917, he was listed as being single, tall, slender (weighing 154 pounds), with light blue eyes and light brown hair. Edgar formally enlisted for service in the U.S. Army on June 15, 1917, at Durham, N.C. He was assigned as a Private First Class to Company A, 105th Ammunition Train, Field Artillery, U.S. Army.
Edgar W. McCullers trained with his unit at Camp Sevier in South Carolina, breaking camp on May 21, 1918, for Camp Mills on Long Island in New York—where his unit arrived on May 25, 1918. During the trip to New York, McCullers’ unit passed through North Carolina and paraded in Raleigh on May 22, 1918. His unit would travel through Canada, up the Saint Lawrence River to Halifax, Nova Scotia (which they reached on May 31, 1918), before heading across the Atlantic to England. His unit reached Liverpool Harbor on June 11, 1918.
McCullers’ unit crossed the English Channel aboard the H.M.T. Aquilon on June 20, 1918, and arrived in Le Havre, France, on June 21, 1918. After the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, McCullers’ unit, assigned to the 33rd Division, moved into Luxembourg. On Christmas morning, December 25, 1918, McCullers moved with the 33rd Division to Prussia as part of the Allied occupation forces in Germany. By January 1, 1919, McCullers had returned to Luxembourg with the 55th Field Artillery Brigade (which included the 105th Ammunition Train). By February 1919, he and his unit had returned to France.
After being discharged from the Army, Edgar McCullers returned to Trinity College, now in his second year at the School of Law. While at Trinity, Edgar served in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as a Battalion Supply Officer; was a member of the American Expeditionary Forces Club; and served as president of the Acacia Club. He was also a poet, writing for the college yearbook in 1920.
Edgar W. McCullers married late in life at the age of 48 to Josephine McGriff Henley, in Mecklenburg County, N.C., on October 20, 1942. He went on to live in Smithfield, N.C. Edgar W. McCullers died at the age of 79 from a heart attack on November 23, 1973, at the Johnston Memorial Hospital in Clayton, N.C. He was buried at Maplewood Cemetery in Clayton, N.C.
To learn more about Edgar McCullers’ WWI service, check out the Edgar W. McCullers Papers (WWI 17) held in the WWI Papers of the Military Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina in Raleigh, N.C.
This blog post is part of the State Archives of North Carolina’s World War I Social Media Project, an effort to bring original WWI archival materials to the public through the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ (NCDNCR) various social media platforms, in order to increase access to the items during the WWI centennial celebration by the state of North Carolina.
Between February 2017 and June 2019, the State Archives of North Carolina will be posting blog articles, Facebook posts, and Twitter posts, featuring WWI archival materials which are posted on the exact 100th anniversary of their creation during the war. Blog posts will feature interpretations of the content of WWI documents, photographs, diary entries, posters, and other records, including scans of the original archival materials, held by the State Archives of North Carolina, and will be featured in NCDNCR’s WWI centennial blog.