Republican congressman William M. McCulloch, born near Holmesville to James H. and Ida McCulloch on November 24, 1901, was one of the architects of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first of three laws to recommit the nation to the cause of civil rights in the 1960s. Raised on the family farm, he attended local public schools, the College of Wooster, and earned his law degree from the Ohio State University in 1925. He married his childhood sweetheart, Mabel Harris McCulloch, in 1927 after settling in Jacksonville to begin his career during the Florida land boom of the 1920s, and the Deep South's racial intolerance there seared him. The McCullochs returned to Ohio in 1928, and he joined a law firm in Piqua. He entered politics in 1932, winning election to the Ohio General Assembly, served as Speaker of the Ohio House from 1939 to 1944, and after service in the army during World War II was elected representative from the Fourth Ohio Congressional District, serving from 1498 to 1973. He rose to become the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and, seeing himself as an upholder of Republicans' commitment to civil rights dating from the party's founding, co-sponsored what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and guided it to passage. He died in 1980 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.