Reverend Frank Bullock

b. 1853 - Bath, Somerset, England
d. 1946

Parents Unknown

Grandpa Bullock was born in Bath, Somerset, England. His mother died while he was very young. His father remarried – not the right thing to do in those days. So he, his new wife and son Frank immigrated to South Australia, probably in the early 1850’s. Also arrived another boy, presumably the new wife’s son. I understand he was spoken of as ‘Frank’s stepbrother’. I understand that he later moved to New Zealand.
These were early days of the colony of South Australia. They lived in a small settlement, Seven Hills, now a part of Clare, SA. This is some 150kms.north of Adelaide.

Frank had little or no schooling and used to stand on a box and look through a window where a small class were getting private tuition of an evening. Apparently the box collapsed one evening and he was found by the teacher who persuaded his parents to allow him several months tuition.

Subsequently, with a year for education and in order to get this, he was taken to a Methodist School. From here he later studied for the ministry and spent the whole of his subsequent life as a Methodist Minister.

I remember him well. He was gentle, loved his garden and kept the household in fresh vegetables. I was about 18, when one evening I was in the garden with him and he said out of the blue, “Jim, do you take a glass of ale?” I could only say yes. He replied, “I don’t like the beastly stuff.” No lecture but this was to make me feel that I should be very careful of alcohol. At the time when my mother died he was the minister at Henley Beach Methodist Church and I lived with my grandparents for the next eight months. I remember him well as a kind and tolerant man. He had quite a lot of carpentry tools and spent some leisure time making various things. To encourage me he converted a kerosene case into a tool case, which he filled with various tools and gave me. Some of which I still possessed until we reduced possessions to enter a retirement house.

He lived to 92 years of age and was well respected all of his life. He had been moved from circuit to circuit every three years and it was while the family were in Willunga SA that my mother met Eva Culley, later to become Eva Blacker, They were very close friends until Mum died. It was then that I was asked to spend school holidays on the Blacker farm. Jack their eldest son and I became close friends, which lasted until Christmas week in 1995 when he died.

Jim Richards

Bullock Family Tree

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