Name/Title
August/September 1970 50 year ago Bull family incorporatedEntry/Object ID
000549Tags
Bull PicnicScope and Content
Bull family group incorporated 50 years ago
By EDWARD P. DOUGHERTY
Executive Editor
The Bull Family reunion-picnic is an institution in
Orange County, started more than a century ago.
But the Bull Family Association, Inc., is only half
that age, having been organized at the annual gathering
of the clan in the Campbell Hall Grove 50 years ago this
week.
Incorporation of the association was brought on,
strangely enough, by World War One. Soon after the
Armistice, the family set up a war memorial committee
to honor members who had been in the armed service.
In late summer of 1920 the committee presented its
report which contained a suggestion for incorporation of
the family association. The committee also proposed
that the new association purchase the Stone House,
original Bull homestead, occupied at the time by the
Ebenezer Bull family.
A third recommendation was that the family collect
pictures of every member who had served in World War
One "for preservation."
Those attending the 1920 reunion greeted the
memorial committee's report with great enthusiasm.
All recommendations were unanimously approved,
and the new-born association established an executive
committee "with power" to proceed with incorporation
plans and to negotiate for the purchase of the Stone
House "for not more than $20,000."
The executive committee consisted of ten family
members, headed by Charles W. Slaughter. Earlier in
the meeting Mr. Slaughter had been elected president of
the family group to succeed Robert McLeon Jackson.
The Retail Clerks Association of Middletown
threatened its first strike half a century ago today.
The threat came a few hours after a group of city
merchants had agreed to keep their stores open until nine
o'clock each evening (The closing hour normally was six
o'clock, and nine o'clock on Saturdays). At a meeting in the Chamber of Commerce office the clerks voted to turn their complaint over to the Central
Labor Council.
The merchants (only a small portion of the total in
Middletown at the time), said they planned evening
hours to accommodate the "laboring man's family." The
Labor Council spokesman responded that the laboring
man did not need extra hours and promised full support
of the clerks.
[Caption text below the photo image:]
...and it wanted
A Bull-y picnic
TH-Record photo
[Handwritten:] Aug. 25, 1970
Michael K. Brown and his daughter Melanie welcome visitors to the 103d
annual Bull Family picnic at Orange County's oldest house, the Stone House in Hamptonburgh. More than 300 came from as far away as South Dakota.