| While most Fulkersons in America presumably descend from Dirck Volckertszen, a Norwegian carpenter who settled in New Amsterdam about 1630, a mystery surrounds the birth of Richard Fulkerson in 1765, presumably in Colonial New Jersey. Neither baptism nor christening records can be found, and no will has turned up in which he is listed as an heir. Some researchers suggest that Richard and his brother, Benjamin, actually descended from a Germanic Fulkerson or a Scottish Fulkerson. Help unraveling this mystery will be greatly appreciated. We do know that Richard was born in 1765, according to his gravestone which still stands in Bellbrook, Ohio. Our first documented records of Richard are found in Virginia in 1800 when he witnessed the freeing of a slave named Bob. Then in 1801, Richard married Clarinda Moore, daughter of Quaker John Moore. Richard's brother, Benjamin, married Clarinda's sister Mary about the same time. After the War of 1812, which opened up the west to settlers, Richard and Benjamin moved their families to the new state of Ohio. Richard and Clarinda packed their belongings in a wagon and head west. When they reached the Ohio River, they loaded their wagon and cattle on a flat boat and floated down the river, going ashore at what is now Cincinnati. From there, they traveled north by wagon, eventually purchasing land and settling in what is now Greene County, Ohio. Benjamin and Mary settled in nearby Butler County. In Greene County, Richard practiced his trade as a cooper or barrelmaker. It was also there that Richard's son William, also a cooper, married a local girl named Eliza Jane Maffett. Among their first children was Amos Newton Fulkerson, born in 1840. When he was just six years old, Amos climbed aboard his father’s wagon, loaded with the family’s possessions, and the William Fulkersons ventured farther west into Indiana, a new state that had only recently been Indian territory. William and Eliza Jane had learned about a new community in Indiana being settled by other families from Greene County, Ohio, and chose to join them. They purchased land in what is now Blackford County, near the town of Dunkirk. William was considered a pioneer of that county and is memorialized in local history. William and Eliza chose farmland near several families named Stewart, of Irish descent, who had all settled in Blackford County sometime earlier. The Stewarts had come from Virginia in the 1830s. Young Amos soon met a pretty neighbor girl named Rebecca Stewart. They would go to school together and play together, in whatever little playtime children of pioneers could find. Amos and Rebecca would one day be married and start their own family. Amos would farm, and he would teach in a one-room schoolhouse, before eventually volunteering to fight on behalf of the Union in the War Between the States in the Indiana Volunteer Cavalry. After the War Between the States, Amos and Rebecca had many children. Their last child was Sidney Clio Fulkerson. Sidney Clio Fulkerson, born in 1884, would take up glassblowing as a trade and work in one of the many glass factories of Blackford and Cicero counties, Indiana. He played baseball for a glass factory team and earned the knickname of “Slugger.” One day he would strike out on his own to move to the town of Olney, Illinois, where a new glass factory was being opened. There he first lived in a boarding house owned by Henry and Alice Levering Taylor. It was there that he fell for Tress Taylor, the beautiful young daughter of the boarding house owners, and she would become his wife. Sidney died an early death, at the age of 47, due to a kidney disorder, but the Fulkerson name and pioneering spirit continues in generations of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. |
Descendants of Richard Fulkerson, Early American Cooper
Updated September 5, 2000 |
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Perry Fulkerson Clemson University 110 Daniel Drive Clemson, SC 29634 United States 864-656-0661 Fax: 864-656-5899 fperry@clemson.edu |
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