Thomas Logan Tullock (1820 - 1883)
Born and died at Portsmouth (NH).
Businessman and government official.
Portrait by U.D. Tenney, 1882, after portrait by Adna Tenney, 1860.
Presented to the State by Mrs. Tullock, 1883.

Tullock (1820 - 1883) was born and died at Portsmouth (NH). His principal biographer (George N. Roberts, "Thomas L. Tullock," Granite Monthly, April 1882) wrote, "Mr. Tullock has been unemployed less than one year from April 21, 1834 to the present time."

Tullock had a talent with mathematics. He worked for seven years (1834 - 1841) for Major Samuel Larkin, a prominent Portsmouth commission merchant and auctioneer, then left to become confidential clerk for Portsmouth Postmaster Colonel Samuel Gookin, at a time when Portsmouth was one of five major postal centers in the United States. But in 1842 distribution of the mails switched from horse-drawn coaches to railroad cars, and Portsmouth lost its importance as a postal center. Tullock left Portsmouth for New York City, then the preeminent port and commercial center, in 1842. He was brought back to Portsmouth in 1845 by Colonel Gookin, to handle the accounts and general management of Gookin & Stearns, an important manufacturer.

In 1858 Tullock was appointed New Hampshire Secretary of State (served 1858 - 1861). It was then that Tullock "...commenced the Portrait gallery of the governors and other citizens ... which has steadily and largely increased until it has become one of the most valuable and highly prized institutions of the State"(Roberts, op cit.). Tullock and Benjamin F. Prescott, a later Secretary of State (and governor, 1877 - 1879) had a lively and voluminous correspondence about the portait collections; it is preserved at The New Hampshire Historical Society.