J. Dan Hull, II, 1933. Above is his Yale Ph.D picture. Class act. American dream overachiever and gentlemen’s gentlemen. Authentic and honest–and never went out of his way to trumpet either trait. My Grandpop.
The following is my rough working sketch of his life. Bear with me.
Grandpop was the first in the Virginia-Missouri Hull family line to go to college. His dad, self-educated John Hull, had made his first stake as a laborer building railroads out West and ended up owning a drug store and a bank in Mountain Grove, Missouri. Grandpop, who fought with his own dad a lot (as I did with mine), entered University of Missouri at 16 years old and and got his Masters degree from University of Chicago at age 20. Born in Mountain Grove, Missouri, he ended his career as a player in the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, author (including co-authoring the standard text for many years on secondary American education), Renaissance man and member of the Cosmos Club, the merit-based club for D.C.’s intellectual and academic elite.
In America, Grandpop’s family of Holls/Hulls were relative newcomers compared to my Mom’s side of the family, who got to Massachusetts in 1634. In 1750, his great-great-great grandfather came to fhe colonies as a teen with his own father from Germany. The trip was from Rotterdam to Philadelphia on a ship called “The Brothers.” They eventually moved Middlebrook, Virginia. Three generations later, in 1858, just before the Civil War, another earlier Dan Hull, a miller and farmer (“˜Old Dan Hull’), moved his large family from Virginia to Missouri in a what sounds like an ingenious “tricked-out” family carriage reputedly-handy old Dan had built especially for the trip. Old Dan drove the carriage. A wagon hitched to a four-horse team driven by a Bill Argenbright hauled the family goods. The journey to Missouri took two months. The oldest Bill Hull (age 21)–my great-great grandfather–served on horseback as scout and advance man for supplies and campsites. Old Dan’s other two sons, also on saddle horse, helped guide the trip. Just before making the trip, the family freed the slaves (at least 3) they had. They rested once a week to do washing, rest and attend church if possible. His wife, who hopefully I’ll write about some other time, was a devout Lutheran, as were all the 108 years of German-descended kin they were leaving back in Middlebrook, Virginia.