Son of Thomas Bullock and Mary Hall

Married Henrietta Rushton, 25 Jun 1838, Leek, Staffordshire, England

Married Lucy Caroline Clayton, 23 Jan 1843, Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois

Married Betsy Prudence Howard, 9 Dec 1852, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

An Enduring Legacy, Volume Nine, p. 25

Thomas was born December 23, 1816, in Leek, Staffordshire, England, the last of nine children born to Thomas and Mary Hall Bullock. At the age of fourteen he left school to become a clerk in the law office of John Cruso, where he labored for eight years. In some of his letters he refers to himself as "One of Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Officers of Excise."

At the age of twenty-two, Thomas married Henrietta Rushton, a girl whom he had known for many years. Two years later, the Rushton family accepted the principles of Mormonism and Henrietta was baptized. The Bullock family was converted in 1841.

Thomas was baptized in November, ordained an elder within a short time, and helped to organize a branch of the Church in Brierleyhill, Staffordshire. A year later he and Henrietta decided to join the Saints in America. So it was that in February of 1843 Thomas resigned his commission as excise officer, and the following month he and his family went aboard the ship Yorkshire en route to their home across the ocean. Thomas was chosen to supervise the eighty-three Saints on board.

Although the voyage was attended by a series of misfortunes, leaving nothing but the hull of the vessel to carry the Saints into New Orleans, they arrived safely and boarded the steamer Amaranth bound for Nauvoo, which point they reached on May 31, 1843. Not long after their arrival, Thomas became a clerk for Joseph Smith.

After the death of President Smith, the Saints were persecuted and driven to a bend in the Mississippi River. Elder Bullock wrote: "I tremble now when I think of it. The sick were carried in blankets or rugs in the cornfields, expecting an indiscriminate massacre; bands of armed demons paraded the streets. Thirty men came to me when I was carried out before them in one of my ague attacks, and, although every appearance indicated a speedy dissolution—the captain's sword was pointed within six inches of my throat, and four bayonets fixed within a foot of my breast—I was carried and placed in my wagon and driven to the river. In three days I escaped from their clutches and was rowed over the river. After lying on the banks about a week, all of my family having the ague and fever, I was relieved with a little flour and prepared to start for Bluffs, when God sent the visitation of quails and gave another manifestation that His Saints were not forgotten. The quails fell in, under and on our wagons. One fell on my tea tray, hitting a tin cup, and was caught by a little boy.

"The spring of 1847 saw me leave my family in the sickly country among Indians to go as one of the 143 pioneers who sought out the valley in the mountains .... I returned to my family that same fall. In 1848 I again traveled to Utah through the deserts and sage plains with my family."

Thomas was clerk for the first pioneer company. On the journey he kept a faithful record of events, distances traveled, weather conditions and other interesting data. He was elected recorder of Salt Lake County, a position he held until he left on a mission to Great Britain in 1856. When the Deseret News was founded in 1850 he was one of the four men chosen to turn out the first edition. He was chief clerk in the historian's office under Willard Richards and George A. Smith. In December 1856 he served a mission in England.

Thomas Bullock passed away at Coalville, Utah, on February 10, 1885. Although the Deseret News announced his funeral, and the Salt Lake Daily Herald provided an obituary, one of Thomas's friends, feeling that a little more should be said of this kind, hardworking man, sent the following to the Herald:

Thomas Bullock was a very prominent character in the early history of this city.... He worked at clerking most of his time. He was clerk to Willard Richards, historian of the Church, until the latter's death; was chief clerk to Brigham Young, and was a general chief clerk to the Church in the early days in this city.

He was clerk of the pioneer camp to this valley in 1847, also to Brigham Young's camp in returning to this valley in 1848. He used to take down the minutes of public meetings, and discourses of Brigham and others, in an abbreviated long hand, mixed with a little of Pitman's phonography. Certain of our older citizens may yet have some of his primitive deeds or certificates of land, written in his peculiar small upright characters on bits of paper containing four or five square inches superficies [a surface or its area]. Paper was scarce in those days.

He worked with John Kay, more or less, in coining California gold dust into five-dollar and other pieces. He dug out, or assisted to dig out, the warm spring just north of the city, and was very fond of bathing there.

I believe he was an exciseman when in England. He was well known here at one time as inspector of liquors. He was clerk in the local Legislative Assembly several sessions. In September 1856 he started on a mission to England, returning in the summer of 1858. He commenced clerking in the Historian's office in November 1859, continuing there until January 1865.

Thomas formerly lived on and owned the lot on the northwest corner of the block on which the Jennings Emporium building stands, opposite the present Herald office corner. I believe the tall locust trees, or some of them, now standing on the Clawson lot, corner of South Temple and Third East streets, once grew on the Bullock lot above specified. He also had a small farm at Cottonwood. During the latter years of his life he resided at Coalville, and I saw very little of him.

In the very early days of the city and territory, he was one of the best-known characters here, and a close attendant to Brigham Young. In those days everybody knew "Tommy Bullock." Peace to his ashes.

June 5, 1885. DEPARTED THIS LIFE. The numerous relatives and friends of Grandmother Free will learn with feelings of pain of her departure from this life, which event took place at the farm in Sugar House Ward yesterday at 3:10 p.m.