Wayne County Biographies



Part of the Indiana Biographies Project



Daniel Bulla

In the days when Wayne county was a frontier settlement, during the first decade of the present century, William Bulla, a native of Guilford county, North Carolina, cast in his lot with the few inhabitants of this section, and from that day to this the family have been prominent and influential in the annals of southeastern Indiana. For generations they adhered to the faith of the Society of Friends, and have been noted for industry, honor and justice in all their relations with their fellow men.

William Bulla, mentioned above, was the father of the subject of this memoir. He came to the north in 1806 and entered a quarter-section of government land in Wayne township. The property was covered with heavy timber, much of which he cleared away, and the year after his arrival here he built a substantial house one mile north of the present corporation limits of Richmond. The walls of the cellar of this comfortable house are of stone, two feet in thickness, and the sleepers are hewn from massive forest trees. Though ninety-two years have rolled away since the construction of the residence it is still in good preservation, and is now occupied by the widow of Daniel Bulla and by their two sons. After its hospitable walls had sheltered him for more than half a century William Bulla died in the old home, in 1861, at the age of eighty-five years. He was reared as a Friend, but was not actively identified with the meeting. His wife, Elizabeth, was a sister of David Hoover, who was one of the committee appointed to select a name for Richmond, and was the person who suggested this name, dear to the many southern settlers from old association. Of the seven sons and four daughters born to William and Elizabeth Bulla, all lived upon farms and were interested in agricultural occupations save James, who was a millwright.

Daniel Bulla was born in Wayne township in the old home, April 13, 1814, and passed the greater part of his life there. His chief occupation was farming, though for a few years he lived in Richmond and was employed in the manufacture of plows. He was the president of the Wayne County Agricultural Society at one time and kept well posted upon everything relating to the subject, frequently delivering addresses before the farmers of the county in their meetings for the exchange of ideas on the proper management of farms. Interested in the public schools, he was a director of the board of his own district, and in political matters he was a Whig and a Republican.

During the troubled days which preceded the dreadful civil war, both Daniel Bulla and his revered father were active and zealous in the "underground railroad" system, as they lived on the route which many escaping slaves followed on their way to Canada. On one occasion William Bulla employed on his farm a negro who had come from Kentucky. The master traced him to this section, and while trying to establish his ownership of the slave in a justice court the negro tried to jump from the window of the court room, but his master seized him by the leg. The poor man, suspended painfully in mid-air, shrieked pitifully, and Mr. Bulla, kind-hearted man that he was, could not endure this, and, springing forward, he forced the Kentuckian to release his prisoner, who needless to say made good his escape. The result of the case was not a pleasant one for Mr. Bulla, however, as he was sued by the irate southerner and obliged to pay one thousand dollars, the estimated value of the slave, and the costs of the court.

Daniel Bulla chose for his wife Caroline, daughter of Abner Clawson, who was a life-long farmer, his home being on Middleboro Pike, in Wayne township. To Mr. and Mrs. Bulla three sons and a daughter were born, namely: Andrew J. and William A., who are both farmers on the old homestead; Charles H., also a farmer of Wayne township; and Mrs. Elizabeth Pyle, whose home is in the vicinity, likewise. Mr. Bulla departed this life on the 1st of June, 1890, loved and mourned by a large circle of friends and neighbors, who treasure his memory, the memory of a blameless life.

Source:
Biographical and Genealogical History of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin Counties, Indiana. Chicago. The Lewis Publishing Company. 1899.



Daniel Bulla, eighth child of William and Elizabeth (Hoover) Bulla, was born in the house where he now resides, Wayne Township, Wayne Co., Ind., April 13, 1814. His youth was spent in assisting his father and in attending the subscription schools. In the winter of 1836-'7 he went to St. Joseph County, Ind., returning the next fall. He then helped his father build a saw-mill, and ran it four years. He then carried on the farm till 1851, when he went to Richmond, and worked in a plow-shop about five years. March 26, 1857, his mother died, and he then moved back to the old homestead. In 1862 his father died, and he having been appointed executor, settled up the estate. Mr. Bulla was married Feb. 3, 1848, to Caroline Clawson. Their children are — Andrew J., born Nov. 17, 1848; Charles Henry, born Jan. 12, 1851; Elizabeth, born Aug. 27, 1855; William Abner, born April 9, 1858. Mr. Bulla's grandfather, Thomas Bulla, came to America from Ireland, when a young man, and settled in Chester County, Pa., where he married Esther Widows, by whom he had twelve children. In 1784 he moved to Randolph County, N. C. He owned six or seven slaves, but set them free in his will. William, his oldest son, was born April 14, 1777, and in 1798 married Elizabeth Hoover, daughter of Andrew Hoover, of German descent. In 1801 William Hoover moved to Warren County, Ohio; crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, at that time only a village. In 1803 he moved to Montgomery County, ten miles north of Dayton, on Stillwater River. There the family were all sick with the ague, and in the fall of 1806, with two others, he followed a section line through a dense wilderness of forty miles to Dearborn, now Wayne County, Ind., where he bought land and moved his family to it. He drove about seventy head of hogs to his new home. The grain for bread for the family had to be taken to Dayton, and for a short time to Eaton, to be ground. In 1810 Mr. Bulla erected a small mill on the Middle Fork of Whitewater River, which was a great accommodation to the settlers. The same year he built the house his son Daniel lives in. It is 18 x 24 feet in size, every log wild cherry save one sill, which is black walnut, and two stories high. William Bulla's children were eleven in number — Anna, born Dec. 26, 1799, married Evan Chalfant, and in the fall of 1832 moved to St. Joseph County, Ind., where she died March 27, 1849; Elizabeth, born Feb. 27, 1801, married Samuel Burgess, and settled one mile southwest of Richmond, where she died, March 26, 1857; Thomas P., born March 25, 1804, married Hannah Draper, and in 1832 accompanied his brother-in-law to St. Joseph County, Ind., and still resides in South Bend; has been County Surveyor twenty-five years; Andrew, born Feb. 12, 1806, was by trade a printer, and published the Western Times, a weekly paper, in Centreville; died Feb. 22, 1832, unmarried; James, born Jan. 10, 1808, was a millwright; died July 3, 1861, unmarried; William, Jr., born Feb. 10, 1810, married Mary Stephenson and moved to St. Joseph County, Ind., where he died July 2, 1862; David, born Jan. 14, 1812, married Sarah Cox, and removed to Louisville, Ky., where he died Aug. 25, 1857; Daniel, born April 13, 1814; Esther, born September 28, 1816, married John W. League, of Richmond, Ind., Sarah, born Oct. 19, 1818, married David M. Golden, and lives near Richmond; John, born Oct. 8, 1821, married Ann H. Crompton, and is a farmer of St. Joseph County, Ind. William Bulla died in his eighty-sixth year, and his wife in her seventy-seventh. They lived to see Wayne County — which was a wilderness at the time of their settlement — the seat of culture and refinement. In May, 1823, Mr. Bulla went to Richmond and while there learned that two Kentuckians had caught a slave, George Shelton, belonging to Samuel Todd. He, with some others, rescued the slave, and Mr. Bulla was sued before the Supreme Court at Indianapolis, Judge Parke presiding, and was obliged to pay $1,000 for the slave and $500 costs. The Bulla family have always been Anti-slavery Republicans and temperance men.

Source:
History of Wayne County, Indiana. Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co. 1884. Volume 2. Pages 768 to 770.