The Rachel Copeland Bullard Monument in Historic Fulton Cemetery

Rachel L. Copeland was born February 23, 1829 in Tennessee. She was probably a younger sister of merchant and planter, Lemuel J. Copeland of northwestern Itawamba County. On August 2, 1849 she married Fulton attorney, planter and Cumberland Presbyterian minister Arthur Benjamin Bullard.(born September 10, 1821 in Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee, died in Fulton during 1867).

The Bullard family had a town house in Fulton where Arthur Benjamin practiced law. He also had a plantation home in the county west of the Tombigbee River. A fellow Fulton lawyer, Washington Lafayette Clayton, wrote of Bullard: “He was rather an ungainly man in his personal appearance, being about six feet tall, somewhat stooped, large feet, legs bowed, large prominent teeth, high forehead, deep set, or rather sunken eyes, coal black, with scattering dark hair and large, prominent nose. His eyes were very bright and expressive, and when under his enthusiasm and pressure of some public discussion, his eyes flashed fire, as the saying goes."¹

After the Civil War began Arthur Bullard outfitted an entire company of soldiers from Itawamba County called the Ben Bullard Rifles. During the war his wife Rachel died in Fulton on December 9, 1862 and was buried in the Fulton public graveyard. Shortly thereafter on December 22, 1863 Arthur married Martha Susan Thomas, the daughter of Pleasant Green Thomas and Martha Bourland (the daughter of Judge James Spears Bourland, first president of the Itawamba County Board of Police).

1860 Itawamba County Federal Census
Page 139
916-916
Arthur B. Bullard: 38, C.P. Minister, $63,000, Tenn.
Rachael: 29, Miss.
Clarence B.: 10, Miss.
Laura: 5, Miss.
Elizabeth: 3, Miss.
Emma: 1, Miss.
Nancy J. Webb: 11, Miss.

¹Gwin,Minrose. Olden Times Revisited: W.L. Clayton's Pen Pictures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982, page 96.