Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Oscar Clayton Hull Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

OSCAR CLAYTON HULL

(Transcribed by Peggy Luce)

Oscar Clayton Hull, attorney and school board member of Detroit (Michigan) still calls Butler County home, for he was born on a farm near Potwin, July 22, 1883, being one of a family of eight children. He early learned farming and hard work, but he was a lover of books and set his mind to study for the legal profession.

After completing the early part of his education in Butler County public schools, he went to the State Normal School at Emporia and then to the University of Kansas, where he graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1909. For the next two years he was principal of the Great Bend High School. In 1911 he entered Michigan law school at Ann Arbor, graduating in 1913 with the degree of J. D. He remained a year longer as a law instructor.

He preferred active legal practice to a teaching career and in 1914 definitely cut loose from teaching to become a practicing attorney. He chose Detroit as his field, where he had made acquaintanceships that offered him an opening in that great city, which was then booming with the development of the automobile industry. The World War was breaking at that time, and when America entered it Mr. Hull was appointed federal appeal agent and served in that capacity for the duration of the war.

His standing in the legal fraternity is such that he has been elected to positions of responsibility in both the Michigan and American bar Associations. He was a member of the executive committee of the American Bar Association, 1927-28; president of the Michigan bar Association, 1930-31, and is a member of the Michigan Judicial Council.

From 1929 to 1933 he served in the Michigan legislature where his record was decidedly constructive. In 1933 he was chosen a member of the Detroit Board of Education.

Mr. Hull is a Presbyterian, a Mason, a member of the Acacia (student fraternity), American Bar Association, Michigan State bar Association, and the Detroit Bar Association. Politically he is a Republican.

He was married in 1917 to Miss Erna Zutavern of Great Bend, Kansas, of a prominent pioneer family of Barton County. She lived but one year after their marriage, dying in 1918.

Six years later Mr. Hull was married to Mrs. Fredericka Sims Alden, a talented singer and well known in Detroit musical circles. They have two children, Mary and Frederick.

Mr. Hull’s law firm is Oxtoby, Robison, and Hull. Among their clients are some of the largest and most responsible business organizations of Detroit.

Mr. Hull’s father was Thomas Alonzo Hull, born in Knottsville, Virginia, (now West Virginia), January 14, 1851. He lived in Iowa and Missouri for a time and came to Kansas in 1877 and, after a short stay in Newton settled in Plum Grove Township, Butler County. He worked as a farm hand or a renter until 1891, when he purchased a farm near Potwin. In 1882 he was married to Miss Christina Ullum, who was born in Winchester, October 28, 1859. Mrs. Hull’s family was among the pioneers of Ohio and Indiana. Mr. Hull’s family was of old Colonial stock, living in Maryland Virginia.