His name on the stone says Bulloch, however his death document reads Bullock. Some information also suggests his name as Isaiah instead of John. Perhaps John was a nickname used.

He was 45 years and 9 months old at the time of death.

...Printed by the Fall River Herald on July 20, 2009. The original information can be viewed at the Freetown Historical Society.


John Bullock, a New Bedford saloon keeper, had come to Freetown to deliver a 20-gallon keg of liquor to what some at the trial described as a "parlor bar," the terminology indicating the bar may not have been a legal one.

“He’d been walking around town for a couple weeks with a sawed-off shotgun,’ Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School English teacher William Goncalo told the library’s audience last week, as he described the tale. John Bullock lived in New Bedford Massachusetts and was the son of Robert and Marion Bullock.

John Bullock was murdered that way on June 19, 1862, on what is now Bullock Road in Freetown. A teenager, under the influence of a controlled substance, a robbery, and a shotgun blast to the face.

The boy behind the gun was Obed Reynolds, 17 years old and drunk on a concoction of liquor and gunpowder, which he told investigators he drank to give himself courage.

Reynolds, looking to possess a few dollars was lying in wait for a dry goods and grocery peddler whose weekly route caused him to pass through this lonely road, which in
fact he had traversed the previous day, when Bullock happened along returning to his New Bedford home, in a democrat wagon, from the delivery of a barrel of rum to a kitchen barroom at Slab Bridge. Knowing Bullock and his business, the youth held him up.

Reynolds had been walking around town for a couple weeks with a sawed-off shotgun, whose family was described in the local papers as a "combination of scoundrels." (Sidenote; There were at least 12 other siblings in this family, nine were boys.) Obed Reynolds was married to a Freetown servant girl. Her name was Eliza Maloney, but she lived with the family she served and he lived on his family's farm.

At 6 AM on June 19, Bullock headed for Freetown, sold his liquor and spent the rest of the day in the parlor bar. On his way out of town, about 7 PM, Bullock met Reynolds.
Reynolds shot Bullock in the face. Bullock, a big man, was tougher than Reynolds might have suspected. It did not kill him. Somehow, Bullock got off the wagon and grabbed Reynolds in a headlock. Reynolds drew a dagger and stabbed Bullock, then bludgeoned him with the sawed-off shotgun.

When they cleaned up Bullock, they found 23 stab wounds, Reynolds broke the stock of his gun hitting Bullock.

Reynolds went through Bullock's clothes, taking his watch and wallet, but missing $11 in Bullock's vest pocket.

Reynolds stripped naked and ran home through the woods to the farm of his father, William Reynolds who was a good father and a good farmer, plagued by unruly children.

There was a verdict of guilty on May 19, 1863, in the Supreme Judicial Court, after which Reynolds was sentenced to hang. This sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by the Governor.

The outcry was loud. The murdered man’s brother put an ad in a New Bedford paper, offering $100 for information leading to the arrest of his brother’s killer. It didn’t take long.

“He told his father, ‘I killed a man,’” Goncalo said of Obed Reynolds. Being a good branch of an otherwise bad family tree, Dad Reynolds wanted to turn his boy in to the police. However, the other branches were not for the idea. They threatened to kill him if he did. Caught in what seemed to be an unwinnable situation, William Reynolds fled his own farm for a relative’s home in Dartmouth, stopping on the way to cut his own throat with a straight razor. He lived to testify against his son. “It wasn’t a very good razor,” Goncalo said.

Trackers followed footprints and blood tracks from the spot where Bullock was killed to the Reynolds farm. Between the bloody tracks and father’s testimony, the Defendant was arrested for the homicide.

Obed Reynolds was tried in Superior Court in Taunton. His father gave evidence against him. Obed Reynolds was represented by Louis Lapham and James Madison Morton, two lawyers from Fall River.

“I’m innocent, O Lord, I’m innocent,” Obed Reynolds cried as the jury handed down a verdict of guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree. In those days, the penalty for first degree murder was hanging.

Obed Reynolds went to jail in New Bedford to await sentencing. There, he learned to read and write, writing letters to newspapers admitting the crime but saying he’d been driven to it by the combination of rum and gunpowder and by drinking in general. His letters referred often to God and demon rum.

“If Obed Reynolds wanted to save his life, he was saying the right things,” Goncalo said. It worked. In 1864, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew commuted Obed Reynolds' sentence to life in Charlestown State Prison, where he died in 1876, possibly from tuberculosis.

“He is buried in a small cemetery on Pine Island Road,” Goncalo said. “It’s not far from where he lived.” Obed Reynolds' father is buried next to him. “His father’s testimony was the most damning at the trial,” Goncalo said.

On Bullock Road, Goncalo said, a sickle-shaped piece of granite juts from the ground where. It is a shapeless stone without inscription or marking, located just South of what is now, Pierce Way East. It appears to be a natural outcropping of rock. It is not. It is a grim monument marking the spot where John Bullock, a 46-year-old wine merchant of New Bedford was murdered on June 19, 1862. At that time, the road was originally known as Slab Bridge Road, but was later changed to Bullock Road after the murder. It was erected by those who lived along the road, not long after John Bullock died, to mark the spot of his murder. For over 100 years, Goncalo said, unknown parties have from time to time splashed red paint on the stone. No one knows why.

Note: The granite marker on Bullock Road in also posted