FULTON

A short history of Fulton

Fulton was founded in 1866, and named by George Ware Fulton, Sr., whose wife Harriet Smith Fulton inherited 11,000 acres (4,500 ha) on the northern end of the Live Oak Peninsula, including the area where Mr. Fulton created the town he named for himself. Fulton had been a teacher in Indiana and decided to come to Texas by flatboat with 60 other men during the war for independence between Texas and Mexico. After the long trip to Texas, George Fulton found that the war was over but he joined the Army of the Republic of Texas for a few months. He worked for Henry Smith, the first Governor of Texas, and married Smith's daughter, Harriet. They raised a family and moved around the country as George found jobs supervising railroads and building bridges. When Harriet inherited 48,000 acres of the Texas coast, they moved back to live on the Live Oak Peninsula.

After ten years, the Fultons built a large house, now known as the Fulton Mansion, just south of the town. The Fulton's owned thousands of cattle wandering on their extensive lands, and formed a cattle company with others. Mr. Fulton built slaughterhouses and patented a chilled slaughterhouse, the first in the world. The town quickly became the site for many slaughterhouses as cattle from south Texas were driven to Fulton. The cattle slaughterhouses lasted until the 1880s when railroads reached the area and provided ways to ship live cattle to population centers such as Chicago.

On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Fulton at category 4 intensity. It caused significant damage to the town such as destruction to the Fulton Mansions chimney and roof causing water damage on the inside as well. As of the town itself, hotels, homes, and structures were destroyed later causing a 3-5 year recovery from all the debris in the small town of Southeast Texas.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Fulton, Texas, revision 1378785838 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.