The Unyielding Spirit of the Rhode Island Bull Family

 

The lineage of Governor Henry Bull (our 10th great-grandfather) moves directly through the ideological and physical battlegrounds of early Rhode Island, tracking the colony's evolution from a radical religious sanctuary into a contested frontier.

🔍 Critical Lineage & Historical Verifications

Gen 1: Governor Henry Bull (1610–1694) — The Radical Dissident

• The Excommunication: Arriving in New England in 1635 aboard the James, Bull was originally a member of the Puritan church in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Church records note he was "weak & affectionate" and quickly fell under the influence of Anne Hutchinson’s theological "familism," leading to his swift excommunication. 
• The Portsmouth Compact (1638): Banished from Massachusetts, Bull was the 18th signer of the Portsmouth Compact, which established the first secular government in the New World. Because he was illiterate, he signed with his unique mark. 
• The Interim Governorship: He later converted to Quakerism. In 1685 and 1690, during periods of immense political chaos when the British Crown attempted to strip Rhode Island of its charter, the colony chose the aging, fearless Bull as a steady hand to serve as interim Governor. 

Gen 2: Captain Jireh Bull (1638–1684) — The Frontier Target

• The Kingstown Outpost: Jireh did not stay on the safe confines of Aquidneck Island; he pushed into the Narragansett frontier (modern-day South Kingstown) and built a heavily fortified stone garrison house. 
• The Jireh Bull Blockhouse Massacre (1675): This site became the direct catalyst for one of the most famous military actions in early American history. On December 15, 1675, during King Philip's War, Narragansett warriors attacked Jireh Bull’s garrison, burning it to the ground and killing 15 settlers. Jireh survived the war, but the destruction of his home forced the United Colonies' militia to launch the bloody counter-offensive known as the Great Swamp Fight just four days later, directly in Jireh's backyard. 

Gen 3 to 5: The Kingstown Planters & The Mumford Transition

• Ephraim Bull (1669–1721): Born just before the devastation of King Philip's War, Ephraim rebuilt the family fortunes in the freshly stabilized Kingstown area. He married Mary Coggeshall, connecting our tree to John Coggeshall, another original founder of Rhode Island and the colony's first President. 
• The Mumford Alliance: Mary Bull's marriage to Peleg Mumford II in 1719 united the Bulls with one of the most powerful agrarian and political dynasties of the Narragansett country. Their daughter, Content Mumford, grew up within the unique "Narragansett Planter" economy—an unusual northern socio-economic system of large-scale estates, commercial dairying, and horse breeding. 

📜 The Architecture of Dissent: The Unyielding Spirit of the Rhode Island Bulls

The story of the early American experiment is often told through the lens of rigid Puritan legalism, but our lineage through Governor Henry Bull belongs to the radicals who shattered that mold. They were the architects of true liberty of conscience—men and women who refused to bow to ecclesiastical tyranny in Massachusetts, carved a secular republic out of the Narragansett wilderness, and stood fast when the flames of frontier war threatened to consume everything they had built.

The saga opened in the winter of 1637, when a young, illiterate servant named Henry Bull stood before the magistrates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and chose banishment over silence. Swept up in the free-grace theology of Anne Hutchinson, Henry was disarmed, stripped of his church membership, and cast out into the freezing wilderness. Alongside Roger Williams and William Coddington, he walked south into Narragansett Bay. There, Henry affixed his mark to the Portsmouth Compact, committing his life to an unprecedented political gamble: a government built on absolute religious freedom. Henry didn't just write the laws of this new sanctuary; he defended them. He built a stone house in Newport that stood as a civic anchor for nearly three centuries, and when the colony faced structural collapse in its twilight years, the settlers twice called upon the fierce old Quaker patriarch to steer the ship of state as Governor.

But the radical freedom of Rhode Island required constant physical defense, a burden that fell squarely on Henry’s son, Captain Jireh Bull. Pushing across the bay into the volatile frontier of Kingstown, Jireh established a massive stone trading post and blockhouse. By the winter of 1675, the long-simmering tensions of King Philip's War erupted into a scorched-earth conflict. Jireh’s fortified home became the literal epicenter of the shockwave. In a coordinated winter raid, Narragansett warriors stormed the garrison, reducing Jireh's frontier empire to ash and killing fifteen of its defenders. The smoke from the Bull garrison massacre became the direct battle cry that marched the colonial armies into the frozen depths of the Great Swamp Fight, fundamentally altering the trajectory of New England history.

Out of the literal ashes of the frontier, the lineage proved its resilience. Jireh’s son, Ephraim Bull, reclaimed the blackened soil of Kingstown, marrying into the elite founding Coggeshall family and transforming the war-torn borderland into a prosperous, civilized domain. Within two generations, the raw military grit of the frontier garrison transitioned into the sophisticated agrarian wealth of the Narragansett Planters through the marriage of Mary Bull to Peleg Mumford. Our ancestors evolved from hunted religious outcasts into the established aristocracy of Washington County, passing down a legacy of stubborn defiance and institutional leadership that eventually carried our DNA through the American Revolution with William Braman and into the industrialized heart of the young American republic.

Thank you to Gemini AI for assisting my research into our Bull family lineage. -- Drifting Cowboy