General Cullum

More than a century and a half before the “social network” was even imagined, Cullum, an innovator and consummate networker, began connecting members of the Long Gray Line in 1850 by chronicling the biographies of every West Point graduate. He assigned Number 1 to the first West Point graduate, Joseph G. Swift (1802), and then numbered every successive graduate in sequence, and to this day, every USMA graduate has a “Cullum number.”

Before his death in 1892, General Cullum completed the first three volumes of a work that would eventually comprise 10 volumes, titled General Cullum’s Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy and covering USMA classes from 1802 through 1850. The current Register of Graduates and Former Cadets is a direct descendant of General Cullum’s seminal work. 

General Cullum’s will contained a $250,000  bequest to be used for the construction and maintenance of a memorial hall at West Point to be dedicated to the officers and graduates of USMA. That impressive building, Cullum Hall, was dedicated in 1900, and was the first building to be donated by a graduate to the Academy.  Cullum Hall was the original home of the offices of the Association of Graduates until 1995, when the staff moved to Herbert Alumni Center.

Download your own Flat Cullum so you can include him in all your adventures in 2019. Whether it’s a personal vacation or a gathering of grads, we want you to share your photos and stories on social media. #flatcullum #wpaog150

If you don’t use social media, you can still share your adventures with Flat Cullum by emailing us your photo. We will post it to an online photo album.

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