He was born November 11, 1811 in Rutherford County, Tennessee, one of twelve children and the fourth son of Alexander McCulloch and Frances Fisher LeNoir. Benjamin's father Alexander, a Yale University graduate, was a descendant of Captain Nicolas Martiau, the French Huguenot settler of Jamestown, Virginia and ancestor of President George Washington. Alexander was also an officer on Brig. Gen. John Coffee's staff during the Creek War of 1813 and 1814 in Alabama (and apparently at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815). His mother was a daughter of a prominent Virginian planter. The McCulloch family had been wealthy, politically influential, and socially prominent in North Carolina before the American Revolution, but Alexander had wasted much of his inheritance and was unable even to educate his sons. (Two of Ben's older brothers had briefly attended a school in Tennessee taught by their neighbor, Sam Houston.) One of Ben's younger brothers was Henry Eustace McCulloch, also a Confederate general officer. Another brother, Alexander, served in the Texas Revolution and as a captain in Mexico.