Daniel W. Hull

 Hull was a Spiritualist who claimed MD and MH degrees. He practiced what is now considered quack medicine. He was a resident of Washington State, occasionally wrote political commentary.

He wrote Letters to Elder Russell, later retitled as A Review of Elder Russell on Spiritism. 

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Daniel Webster Hull

            Daniel Hull was born in Delaware County, Ohio, on April 16, 1833, to James B. Hull, a physcian, and Mary Brundage. He died August 30, 1915, of prostate complications.[1] Little is known of his early life. His brother Moses recalled the family’s move to The Western Reserve in Indiana in 1839. This was true frontier in the 1830s: “Among my early recollections is that of hearing the wolves howl around my father’s cabin door. There were times when we even had to br4ing our dogs into the house to keep them from being torn to pieces by the wolves.” Their life consisted of “grubbing, chopping and hoeing” with a very limited amount of schooling.[2]

            Census records note that Daniel and his wife Mary S. [maiden name unknown – still researching this marriage] lived in New York State for a period and at least briefly in Pennsylvania. The New York State census for 1892 lists him as a salesman and notes three children, two boys and a girl.[3] Hull was a Civil War veteran, serving as a private. At this writing it is impossible to identify his regiment. There are two Daniel W. Hulls, each drawing a pension for Civil War service. An obituary tells us that he “engaged in the newspaper business in Indiana and Kansas.”[4] Hull and his second wife moved to Olympia, Washington, in 1903.

            Finding a record of his conversion to Spiritualism has been a fruitless quest, but we find him attending a Spiritualist convention in 1871, and he published a seventy-five page pamphlet that year.[5] Entitled Christianity: Its Origin, Nature and Tendency, its “object” was “to prove the pagan origin of Christianity; to do away with the Atonement, and show that heaven is a condition, not a place.” The review from which this is taken added, “the author supports the views of modern Spiritualists.”[6] Though rejecting Christianity as a derivative of pagan thought, he was not averse to using scripture to make a point.[7]

            It is likely that he was converted through contact with his brother, Moses Hall, who abandoned the Seventh-day Adventist ministry for Spiritualism in 1863. Unlike James Padgett who was a charlatan, both Daniel and Moses Hull were honest, serious believers. Hull wrote in response to Russell’s What Say the Scriptures About Spiritualism? Proofs that it is Demonism. Also, Who are the Spirits in Prison, and Why are They There?[8] 

Explaining his purpose in writing, Russell wrote that he though it necessary because of an increasing appeal of Spiritualism. It was, he wrote: “meeting with considerable success ... entrapping Christians who are ... dissatisfied ... and craving spiritual food and a better foundation for faith.” His aim was “to show the unscripturalness of Spiritism, and to point those who hunger and thirst for truth in the direction of God's Word – the counsel of the Most High.”

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[1]               Washington State Board of Health Death Certificate number 155, file number 8268, registered number 88, dated September 1, 1915. His parents’ names as found in the 1910 United States Census records for Thurston County, Washington State are Marvin and Helen Hull. A family history, which I believe is more accurate, gives the names noted above. – See C. H. Weygant: The Hull family in America, page 100.

[2]               M. Hull and W. F. Jamieson: The Greatest Debate Within a Half Century on Modern Spiritualism, Progressive Thinker Publishing House, Chicago, 1904, page 4.

[3]               1892 New York Census returns for Groton, Tompkins County, New York. The children were Adelbert, 17 years; Harry, 15 years, Mary, 12 years.

[4]               Dr. D. W. Hull, The Olympia, Washington, Washington Standard, September 3, 1915.

[5]               Henry T. Child, M. D.: “American Association. Official Report of the Eighth National Convention of the American Association of Spiritualists; Held at Troy, N. Y., September 12th, 13th, and 14th, 1871,” Religio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago), September 30, 1871.

[6]               Literary Notices, The Phrenological Journal, July 1871, page 73.

[7]            B. J. Folger: “A Great Mass of Incompetent Men”: Contested Medical Frontiers in Oklahoma: 1880-1940, Master’s Thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2022, page 33.

[8]               First published as Old Theology Quarterly No. 39 (October 1897), it also bore the alternative title What Say the Scriptures about Spiritism?