County of city: Callaway County
Location of site: E. 7th St. & Market St.,(Bus. US-54), public library lawn, Fulton
Pertinent text on marker: Fulton was founded here in the Little Dixie Region of Missouri, 1825, to replace the poorly located Elizabeth as seat of Callaway County. Named for a grandson of Daniel Boone and War of 1812 Ranger, Capt. James Callaway, the county was organized, 1820. The town name honors Robert Fulton. ~ State Historical Society of Missouri
The Person:
Robert Fulton
"(born November 14, 1765, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania [U.S.]—died February 24, 1815, New York, New York), American inventor, engineer, and artist who brought steamboating from the experimental stage to commercial success. He also designed a system of inland waterways, a submarine, and a steam warship.
"Fulton was the son of Irish immigrants. When their unproductive farm was lost by mortgage foreclosure in 1771, the family moved to Lancaster, where Fulton’s father died in 1774 (not 1786 as is generally written). Having learned to read and write at home, Fulton was sent at age eight to a Quaker school. Later he became an apprentice in a Philadelphia jewelry shop, where he specialized in the painting of miniature portraits on ivory for lockets and rings.
"Beginning in 1794, however, having admitted defeat as a painter, Fulton turned his principal efforts toward canal engineering. His Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation, in 1796, dealt with a complete system of inland water transportation based on small canals extending throughout the countryside. He included details on inclined planes for raising boats—he did not favour locks—aqueducts for valley crossings, boats for specialized cargo, and bridge designs featuring bowstring beams to transmit only vertical loads to the piers. A few bridges were built to his design in the British Isles, but his canal ideas were nowhere accepted
"Arriving in New York in December 1806, Fulton at once set to work supervising the construction of the steamboat that had been planned in Paris with Livingston. He also attempted to interest the U.S. government in a submarine, but his demonstration of it was a fiasco. By early August 1807 a 150-foot- (45-metre-) long Steamboat, as Fulton called it, was ready for trials. Its single-cylinder condensing steam engine (24-inch bore and four-foot stroke) drove two 15-foot-diameter side paddle wheels; it consumed oak and pine fuel, which produced steam at a pressure of two to three pounds per square inch. The 150-mile (240-km) trial run from New York to Albany required 32 hours (an average of almost 4.7 miles [7.6 km] per hour), considerably better time than the four miles per hour required by the monopoly. The passage was epic because sailing sloops required four days for the same trip."
" Fulton spent much of his wealth in litigations involving the pirating of patents relating to steamboats and in trying to suppress rival steamboat builders who found loopholes in the state-granted monopoly. His wealth was further depleted by his unsuccessful submarine projects, investments in paintings, and financial assistance to farmer kin and young artists. After testifying at a legal hearing in Trenton early in 1815, he became chilled en route home to New York, where he died. His family made claims on the U.S. government for services rendered. A bill of $100,000 for the relief of the heirs finally passed the Congress in 1846 but was reduced to $76,300, with no interest."~ Encyclopedia Britannica
The City:
FULTON
"Fulton was founded here in the Little Dixie Region of Missouri, 1825, to replace the poorly located Elizabeth as seat of Callaway County. Named for a grandson of Daniel Boone and War of 1812 Ranger, Capt. James Callaway, the county was organized, 1820. The town name honors Robert Fulton.
"Here is the Missouri School for the Deaf, first such school west of the Mississippi, founded in 1851; Presbyterian Westminster College for men, founded 1851, chartered, 1853; and a Christian Church junior college for women, William Woods, founded, 1869, at Camden Point, moved here, 1890. State Hospital No.1 for mentally ill, chartered, 1847, opened here, 1851, is one of the first three such hospitals west of the Mississippi.
"Fulton is the capital of the Kingdom of Callaway, a county early noted for its fine horses and its pioneering in development of the famous Missouri mule.
"Here at Westminster College a plaque marks the site where the phrase "Iron Curtain" was first used in a 1946 speech by English wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Also of interest area museum collection at William Woods College, and, in town, a monument to Capt. James Callaway.
"William D. Kerr (1808-89), was first head of School for the Deaf, and Dr. Turner R.H. Smith (1820-85), of Hospital No.1. here lived novelists Nathan C. Kouns (1833-90); G.W. Hamilton (1845-1909); Caroline A. Stanley (1849-1919); Henry Bellamann (1882-1945)." ~ State Historical Society of Missouri