Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
Springfield, VA, USA. After reading Bernadette Rogers' amazing remembrance, The Arising of My Life (published here on TS-Si.org), I thought I might provide of some of my own deep background. Very deep, in fact, as what follows is the history of the my family line in the New World. We have been here for a very long time. On my father’s side, I am the tenth generation daughter of Isaac Bull, son of Edward Bull of Donnington, Gloucestershire, England.
Isaac Bull was indentured 29 September 1668, by and with the consent of his father, to Williams of Stow-on-the Wold. He was fourteen and his indenture would end in 1675. By 1686, Isaac, a carpenter, was in the New World, married, and a land owner in Worcestor, Massachusetts. He later was a housewright in Newport, Rhode Island and then a millwright in Scituate. We have been in the New World ever since, using our hands and brains to make a living.
His son John was a miller in North Kingston, Rhode Island, and the father of Isaac Bull born 1708 in Jamestown. John’s oldest son Isaac moved to the New York Colony and settled in Dutchess County. They were Quakers.
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Family legend has it that three Bull brothers bought property in Manhattan and, when having difficulty clearing title, hired Aaron Burr to clear it up. The story says that Burr sold out to the other party and the Bull brothers lost their land. None of this can be positively documented.
Josiah, the fourth childe of John Bull, was born in 1714 in Kingston, married to Ruth Trip in 1737, and was one of the first settlers in Beekman Precinct and was a member of the Oblong Meeting House, Quaker Hill, Pawling, New York. He was a millwright and the father of nine children, one of who was Josiah Bull, Jr.
Two of his sons were taken prisoners by the British in the Revolutionary War, and, as rebels, were confined to a British prison ship in New York where they died. They were members of the Bennington Voluntary Militia.
Josiah Bull Jr. lived to become a millwright like his father and was noted for his mechanical ingenuity and skill. By 1773, he owned a sawmill in Verbank, Beekman Princinct.
Amos, the second son of Joshua Bull Jr. was born in 1768 and was on the tax rolls in Prince Edward County, Ontario by the end of the century. Around 1798, Amos moved his family to Northumberland County.
There is no record of his marriage to his wife, most likely a Native American convert from the Five Nations, who is responsible for my high cheekbones. In 1800, Amos acknowledged he had married out of unity. Amos was reinstated in March 1801; his wife was approved for membership five months later.
On Amos’ wife’s side, my family has been in the New World for 15,000 years or more. Unfortunately, the Haudenosaunee did not write down our family tree so I am a little vague on that part.
Amos’ son George was born in 1809 in Ontario, raised a Quaker, and moved with his wife, five of their married children, and some neighbors, to Nebraska via Wagon Train in 1869.
Oxen pulled eight of the wagons, horses one. A party of 33 people and nine covered wagons. None of them appeared to have possessed green cards when they started farming.
There was no meeting house in Nebraska.
My great-grandfather Amos Nance Bull was born 11 April 1845 at Meaford, Ontario and moved to Isabella County, Michigan in 1866. He was a deserter from the French Canadian Army, hiding in a haystack when the soldiers came for him. His Quaker blood won out.
He became a naturalized citizen of the U. S. in 1871, having married Catherine Belles of Pennsylvania in 1868 in Michigan. They moved to Logan County, Kansas, to the Bull homestead in 1886. With the help of the Earps, Dodge City had just become a sleepy little town much like all the other communities in Kansas.
My grandfather, Albinus Nance Bull was born 5 November 1878 in Shelby Nebraska, then moved to Kansas with his father. For many years, he was a stonecutter in Oakley Kansas, a partner in the Oakley Marble and Granite Works.
In the early 1920s, the family (Albinus and Winifred Waterhouse, my grandmother — and another Quaker) moved to California, but returned to Kansas when the youngest child, my Uncle Dick, was about 9 months old. In 1933, in the middle of the dustbowl, they moved again to California, settling in Fowler, near Fresno.
During World War II, my grandfather went to work in the Richmond Shipyards in the San Francisco east bay. He died 3 May 1943 at Richmond as a result of injuries received when struck by an electric train at the shipyards. Grandma, a primary teacher, died in 1961. They are both buried in Fowler.
My father, H. Winston Bull, was born 25 June 1911 in Oakley Kansas, moving to Fowler, California with his parents. He was in college when the depression hit and had to drop out to help support his younger sister and brother, working in radio and eventually ending up in Sacramento California (where he married my mother, Phyllis Faraci ).
My mother’s parents, my grandfather Vito Faraci and my grandmother Catherine Galliardi Faraci, arrived separately in the United States from Palermo, Sicily via Ellis Island in the early 1900s.
They met, fell in love, and married in Chicago, Illinois where my mother was born. The Faraci family eventually moved to Sacramento where Phyllis met Winston sometime in the early 1940s.
World War II arrived to make my father the first Bull in many unknown generations of my direct line to actively serve in battle. After the war, he worked in radio and helped establish the first television stations in Sacramento. My father died in 1979, my mother in the 1980s.
I was born in Sacramento 9 August 1948 and was draft eligible during the Viet Nam War, ending up physically unable to participate because of the lingering effect of polio when I was young. I returned to the east coast of the United States in late 1975 and Northern Virginia in 1980.
I have a brother, 18 months younger than I, and three grown children. I was the first person in my direct line to graduate from a college.
I now live in Northern Virginia with my partner Sharon, the love of my life, and Cedar, our Border Collie who sometimes seem to score higher on IQ tests than we do. I have a successful career with the government and as a poet and a writer. Sharon has proved successful in any number of fields. Neither one of us intends to go quietly.
Every time something has tried to batter us down, we have gotten back up and continued on. I am where I am because of who my ancestors were and their determination to succeed with nary a slave owner or a rich man to be found among them. I honor them by following follow in their footsteps with only my own bootstraps to aid me.
Nobody owes us nothing.
Which is only what I should expect.
Note. The author generally has retained the original spelling of people and place names. Some of them have deprecated or changed with the passage of time.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.
Lisa welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
Transition is not the donning of a mask. The mask was the closet one lived in before. Transitioning is removing the mask to stand nakedly exposed to all that is out there that crushes the lives, hopes, dreams and spirits of people born transsexual.
Josiah, the fourth childe of John Bull, was born in 1714 in Kingston, married to Ruth Trip in 1737, and was one of the first settlers in Beekman Precinct and was a member of the Oblong Meeting House, Quaker Hill, Pawling, New York. He was a millwright and the father of nine children, one of who was Josiah Bull, Jr. 
On Amos’ wife’s side, my family has been in the New World for 15,000 years or more. Unfortunately, the Haudenosaunee did not write down our family tree so I am a little vague on that part. 
My mother’s parents, my grandfather Vito Faraci and my grandmother Catherine Galliardi Faraci, arrived separately in the United States from Palermo, Sicily via Ellis Island in the early 1900s. 
I now live in Northern Virginia with my partner Sharon, the love of my life, and Cedar, our Border Collie who sometimes seem to score higher on IQ tests than we do. I have a successful career with the government and as a poet and a writer. Sharon has proved successful in any number of fields. Neither one of us intends to go quietly. 
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
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