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In the annals of Kansas history Hiram C. Bull has been remembered chiefly for the unusual manner of his death. In Osborne County he is still revered for much more - for his leadership, for his vision, and for his generosity.
The charismatic Bull was born August 19, 1820, in Laona, Chautauqua County, New York, one of eleven children of Thomas and Sally Bull. His father, Thomas, had been one of the first settlers in that county. Hiram received his academic education at Fredonia, New York, and in 1843 was admitted to the New York bar.
Hiram settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1845 and practiced law there for four years. In 1850 he was elected to the Wisconsin Legislature as a state representative. In 1852 he spent a year in California, then returned to Wisconsin and on May 9, 1853, he married Sarah Fifield, a member of one of Wisconsin’s most influential families, at Janesville, Wisconsin.
The next year the Bulls moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where Bull opened a lumber business. By 1856 he operated lumberyards in Janesville, Madison, and Milwaukee. That fall he was elected a state senator. In 1858 he was a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for governor, but lost the nomination by one vote to the eventual governor, Alexander Randall.
In 1859 Hiram was appointed Adjutant General of the Army of the Southwest. In August 1861 Bull enlisted at Dubuque, Iowa for the Civil War and was subsequently wounded at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas. He was later promoted to the rank of major and made Additional Paymaster for the United States Volunteers of the Union Army. Bull was discharged from service at San Francisco in August 1865.
In 1868 the Bulls settled in Leavenworth, Kansas, and opened a lumberyard. Bull soon entered into discussions with Union Pacific railroad officials about possibly starting a town in the state. They convinced him to seek a location along their proposed route into the Solomon River country of north-central Kansas.
In the summer of 1870 Hiram met Lyman T. Earl, a Michigan native also interested in starting a town. The two teamed up and headed west, following the course of the South Fork Solomon River, and on September 12, 1870, they staked out the first townsite in Osborne County, Kansas. A coin toss determined that the name would be Bull City (later renamed Alton), which soon became the major distribution and supply center for the settlers throughout much of northwest Kansas.
In January the first building in the new town, Bull’s one-story, twelve foot wide by twenty-four foot log cabin, was finished. It served as both a home and as a general store.
Hiram Bull was the acknowledged leader in advocating the settlement of northwest Kansas. He was Osborne County’s first probate judge and began serving in 1876 the first of two terms as county representative to the Kansas Legislature. Then on the morning of October 12, 1879, Bull and two other men were killed in an attack by a male elk Bull had been keeping as a pet. Over 2,000 mourners attended Bull’s funeral, still the largest such event ever held in northwest Kansas. Today the elk’s horns can be seen in the Osborne County Courthouse.
Bull’s memory was held in such esteem by the citizens of Osborne County that 50 years after his death a granite monument to his memory was raised over his gravesite in Alton’s Sumner Cemetery.