Dorchester Illustration no. 2466 Toni and Adolphous Bullock
Toni and Adolphous Bullock owned the Bullock Funeral Homes in Boston for 40 years.
Adolphous was the grandson of a Virginia slave and participated in the D-Day action in World War II. He owned the Bullock Funeral Homes with his wife, Toni, for 40 years, although it appears that Toni was the real force behind the business.
They began their business in 1958 in the grand house at 389 Washington Street, which had been built in the very early years of the 20th century.
Toni was born Lessie Maye Harris in Rich Square, North Carolina. She studied at North Carolina State College for two years until the start of World War II, when she joined the army to serve in the Negro Women’s Army Corps as a radio operator, stationed in Des Moines.
Mrs. Bullock became an undertaker at age 23 and was the only Black woman in the New England Institute of Embalming and Anatomy’s class of 1946.
Right after war, the couple was married and came to Boston. The Boston Globe included the following statements in her obituary.
“When Mrs. Bullock spotted the mansion she wanted for her business, she knocked on the door of the Fottler House and offered to buy the Georgian revival structure, which was built in the 1890s [note: the first appearance of the house on a map is in the 1904 Bromley atlas] for one of Dorchester’s most prominent businessmen.
Her business plan faced opposition in the predominantly white, affluent neighborhood. She sought help from the young US senator, John F. Kennedy, and won a peaceful coexistence with her neighbors, she said.
The Bullock Funeral Home carved out a multicultural niche. Clients included gypsies [sic], Haitians, and Jamaicans, all bringing their own customs.
Mrs. Bullock was remembered for hosting stylish parties at the mansion, where staff would serve tea while music was played on the grand piano. She always wore heels and a single strand of pearls.
At the height of her success in the 1970s, she drove a blue Mercedes and handed out money to neighborhood youngsters after they endured her interrogation about their schoolwork and plans for the future, according to her family. She and her husband sent their daughter to private school and then to Yale.”
Toni died in 2011, and Adolphous in 2014.