Fulton, George W., Mansion
Fulton Beach Rd., Fulton, TXBorn in 1810, George Ware Fulton was an entrepreneur who planned and worked to create an emporium on the Texas Gulf Coast. He founded a community named Fulton, Texas, and organized many business ventures to support the community. He built his Victorian house in this community and incorporated in the house many inventions and construction techniques of significance. Additional significance is attached to the house as one of few Victorian houses built along this part of the coast and one which has survived in the harsh climate. Fulton was also an engineer, a bridge builder, a railroad manager, an oilman, a scientific cattleman, and an oceanographer.
Fulton, the cousin of Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, came to Texas from Indiana in 1837 to fight in the Revolution. At the war's end, he was employed by John P. Borden, land commissioner of the new republic, to transfer the Texas land archives from San Antonio to Houston, The task completed, he and Willard Richardson, later publisher of the Galveston News and the Texas Almanac, were sent to survey land claims in the Aransas Bay area. There he became acquainted with Henry Smith, the first provisional governor of Texas, and President Sam Houston's secretary of the Treasury.
The young Fulton courted and wed Smith's oldest daughter, Harriet. They were married in 1840 and shortly thereafter returned east where Fulton thought he could find greater opportunities for a man of his talents and where his children would receive a better education. However, his wife's land inheritance along the Texas coast eventually brought them back to Texas.
During the twenty-year sojourn in the East and Midwest, Fulton worked in a newspaper in Baltimore; engaged in speculative purchases of oil land in Pennsylvania; designed bridges in association with John A. Robeling, the architect who designed the Brooklyn Bridge; and managed the Kentucky Central Railroad.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.