Name/Title
August 1939 Annual Bull picnicEntry/Object ID
002990Tags
Bull PicnicScope and Content
THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1937.
From California For The Bull Family Outing
Mrs. Amy Bull Crist (right) pinned a ribbon on Mrs. Jesse N. Roe of Riverside, Calif., in recognition of the member of the family who had traveled the greatest distance to the seventieth annual family picnic at the Hamptonburgh Stone House yesterday. Mrs. Crist was re-elected president of the association for a second term.
-Photo by Rosa.
300 Descendants Return To Bull Family Reunion
Mrs. Amy Bull Crist Re-elected President By Board for Second Year
HAMPTONBURGH-Three hundred members of the Bull family attended yesterday their seventieth reunion at the stone house built 215 years ago by William Bull and his wife, Sarah Wells, progenitors of the family in Orange County. For a second time the Board of Managers chose Mrs. Amy Bull Crist of Kaisertown as president, after the Family Association re-elected two of its nine directors and selected Harry C. Bull of Chester to succeed Mrs. Phebe Bull Slaughter as a director. Those re-elected were Ernest M. Bull of Washingtonville and Harry Bull of Campbell Hall.
For coming the longest distance, Mrs. Jesse N. Roe of Riverside, Calif. received a blue ribbon. Mrs. Roe arrived the day previously. The next distant visitors were Nelson Crist of Atlanta, Ga., and Mrs. Charles Bull of Bel Air, Md.
Rumsey Coleman of Washingtonville claimed a record for having attended more than sixty of the reunions.
Ralph Bull of Kent, Conn., president of the Bull Association in that State, described that organization and its accomplishments in a talk after the dinner. He was accompanied by his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Harry Rylander of Manchester, Conn., members of the Connecticut organization.
The meeting convened on the lawn beside the old house that William Bull built in 1722. Picnic tables were pushed back and lunch baskets put away as Mrs. Crist called the group to order.
Robert McLeod Jackson of Campbell Hall, secretary, read his report and that of Ernest M. Bull, treasurer, who was unable to attend. Both later were re-elected by the Board of Managers.
Will Install Heating Plant
Members discussed plans to install a $1,000 central heating plant in the stone house for its present occupants, Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Y. Neale. Mrs. Crist announced receipt of several gifts for the purpose, and after a spontaneous collection yesterday, reported more than $700 available. She explained the Association could not use money from its endowment fund for that purpose, but must raise it otherwise. Miss Dolly Booth of Campbell Hall presented a typewritten copy
300 AT OUTING OF BULL FAMILY
of A Genealogy of the Bull Family in Orange County, compiled by Stevenson H. Walsh and filed in the Newburgh City Library. The record was copied by Miss Booth and Mrs. Pierson Booth of Campbell Hall. The work, she explained, had to be done in Newburgh since they could not remove the book from the library. Others who spoke briefly were Andrew Wilson of Scarsdale, and Mrs. Charles Bull of Bel Air. While the elders renewed family acquaintances, the children made new ones in a program of games and story telling under Miss Florence Jenkins of Lincoln, Nebraska, a Summer student at Columbia University and not a member of the Bull family.
As at a reunion sixty-nine years ago, recorded on this year's printed programs: "Games of croquet pleasantly stole away the hours for the young and active." Some of the boys engaged in their own baseball game, and nearly everybody strolled through the two-century-old house, viewing the antiques and reminiscing. All admired the heavy timbering of the kitchen ceiling, brought out this year by removal of a lath and plaster covering not long ago. The next meeting of the family, incorporated in 1920 as The William Bull and Sarah Wells Family Association, Inc., would be the last Wednesday of next August, Mrs. Crist announced. For more than fifty years the family has met on a Wednesday except in 1934 when it convened on Saturday.