BULLIS FAMILY HISTORY, PART II

JOHN LAPHAM BULLIS, From Corporal to Brigadier General

After the surrender of Lee, Corporal John Lapham Bullis's unit was ordered to Texas (along the Rio Grande River, near Brownsville) for Reconstruction duty. He was mustered out of the Volunteer Army on February 6, 1866 at White's Ranch, Texas, after serving almost three and a half years in the War of the Rebellion.

He attempted a personal business of providing logs for the steamboats on the Mississippi for about a year. It was said that civilian life just did not provide as much excitement as military life provided and he entered military service again. He was appointed 2nd Lieutenant in the 41st Infantry, September 3, 1867. This duty permitted little opportunity to advance, so in November, 1869, he requested transfer to the new Twenty-fourth Infantry, composed of white officers and black enlisted men.

With the Twenty-fourth Infantry, he participated in operations against Indian raiding parties and cattle rustlers. While stationed at Fort Clark (150 miles West of San Antonio along the Rio Grande) he received command of a special troop of Black Seminole Scouts. In 1873 and 1874, Bullis and his 20 scouts played a major support role to Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie as he battled against tribes from the Texas Panhandle and Mexico. He received brevet citations for his "gallant service" in the years of 1875 through 1881 and the title of "friend of the frontier" from the state of Texas. He left the Black Seminole Scouts in 1882 for other duties in Indian Territory.

In 1888 he served as agent for the Apaches at San Carlos Reservation. He was transferred to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1893, to act as agent for the Pueblos and Jicarillo Apaches. In 1897, he returned to Texas as Major Bullis and was appointed paymaster at Fort Sam Houston. He saw service in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. After forty years military service, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him brigadier general in 1904 and the next day he retired.

We know less of his personal and civil life than his military career. He married Alice Rodriguez of San Antonio in 1872. She died in 1887 and he married Josephine Withers of San Antonio in 1891. In 1885, during his first marriage, he became one-third owner of Shafter Silver Mines of Presidio County, Texas.

John Lapham Bullis died in San Antonio, Texas on May 26, 1911.

Places named in his honor:
1) Bullis Gap Range, a ten-mile chain of peaks near the Rio Grande
2) Camp Bullis, a military training base near San Antonio, posthumously, in 1917
3) Bullis, Texas, a Southern Pacific Railroad station founded in 1882 as a siding and nonagency station and abandoned by the railroad after 1944


NOTE: Information contained in this article is from the STATEMENT AS TO THE MILITARY RECORD IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY OF BREVET MAJOR JOHN L. BULLIS, 24TH INFANTRY, U.S. ARMY and other family papers.