More than a century and a half before the concept of a “social network” was even imagined, Brevet Major General George W. Cullum, Class of 1833—an innovator and consummate networker—began connecting members of the Long Gray Line by chronicling the biographies of every West Point graduate. He assigned what would become the first cullum number 1 to the first West Point graduate, Joseph G. Swift (1802), and then numbered every successive graduate sequentially by Order of Merit. This endeavor became the foundation for the Register of Graduates.
Cullum was at West Point serving as a military instructor of Practical Military Engineering as the Academy’s 50th anniversary approached. He began compiling a list of those who had attended USMA, and his first publication was released in 1850. It was titled Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy and chronicled graduates from 1802 to January 1, 1850. Cullum left West Point to serve at a number of Civil War fortifications and engineering projects until he returned once more to West Point as Superintendent from 1864 to 1866.
In 1867, Cullum published the Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from Its Establishment on March 16, 1802, to the Army Reorganization of 1866-67. The New York Times praised it as a “contribution to the military history of the Nation so rich in invaluable data and so essential to the future historian or student of American history.” The first volume covered the first 1,058 graduates through the Class of 1840, while the second volume extended to the 2,218th graduate in the Class of 1867. An additional volume, published in 1879, updated previous biographies and added newer graduates. This periodic updating continued, financed by Cullum’s generous bequest upon his death in 1892.
Cullum’s will also included a $250,000 bequest to fund the construction and maintenance of a memorial hall at West Point dedicated to the officers and graduates of USMA. That impressive building, Cullum Hall, was dedicated in 1900 and became the first building donated by a graduate to the Academy. Cullum Hall housed the offices of the Association of Graduates until 1995 when the staff moved to the Herbert Alumni Center.
Subsequent volumes of the Register of Graduates were published every 10 years until the 1940-50 edition, when the bequest was no longer sufficient to sustain publication. These earlier registers are available online as historical reference documents through the U.S. Military Academy Library website: http://library.westpoint.edu/.
In 1946, recognizing that waiting 10 years for updates was impractical, the West Point Alumni Foundation published its first annual Register of Graduates. In 1972, responsibility for this publication was transferred to the Association of Graduates. By 2002, coinciding with the Bicentennial of the Academy’s founding, the Register became accessible online to graduates.
The Register of Graduates and the Cullum number may not exist without General Cullum’s foresight and dedication to cataloging the achievements of the Long Gray Line—a tradition of connection and remembrance that endures today.
