Robert Fulton Birthplace, Garden and Trail

In 1765 the Fulton family lived in this simple but charming stone house in the midst of the beautiful rolling farmland of southern Lancaster County, not far from the Maryland border. Robert Fulton, who became the developer of the first steamboat able to navigate rivers, a brilliant inventor and a fine artist of outstanding talent, was born here on November 14, 1765 to Robert Fulton, Sr. and Mary Smith Fulton.  

Solanco Historical Society is the current owner and manager of the Robert Fulton Birthplace. It was previously under the ownership of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1965 until February 2017.

Directions to the Robert Fulton Birthplace can be found on Google Maps or GPS, the address is 1932 Robert Fulton Highway (Rt. 222), 6 miles south of Quarryville, PA 17566.

Tours of the Robert Fulton Birthplace

Tours of the Birthplace are offered each Sunday and holiday during the summer from Memorial Day in May through Labor Day in September for individuals and families. The hours are from 1 to 5 pm.  Tours are provided on a first-come, first-served basis. See below for tour rates.

Group tours for club members, senior communities, school students and large families are provided by appointment. Please call 717-548-2679 for an appointment (do not use email). See below for tour rates.

Tour Rates:  The fee is $5 per adult; $3 per youth (or 2 for $5) ages 6 to 18; and free for ages 5 and under. During the off-season from September through May, there is a minimum charge of $20, which includes the adult and/or youth rates. 

All tours are weather-permitting and will be cancelled in the case of snow or severe storms. 

What To Expect: An introductory video is presented to visitors and follow-up information is provided by Solanco Historical Society member docents. Following the video, visitors may browse the furnishings and exhibits inside the Birthplace and the plantings in the adjacent kitchen garden.  If desired, visitors may hike on the 1-1/2 mile nature trail. 

Kitchen Garden

Soon after the Management Agreement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was created, the Society arranged for the Drumore Flower Club to research and create a kitchen garden behind the Birthplace using appropriate Colonial-era plants. Since the flower club disbanded in the late 1990s, a small group of Society members has volunteered their time to maintain the vegetable garden, annuals, perennials and rose varieties that the Fulton family would likely have had during their years at the Birthplace during the Colonial era (1620 to 1776). These plantings are similar varieties to those which were brought to the Colonies by English, Irish and Scottish settlers in the area.

The garden paths were built in 1983 by Boy Scout Bob Landis of Troop 40, along with his troop members, as an Eagle Scout project. When the paths needed to be rebuilt in 2011, Brian Phipps of Troop 91 made the project his Eagle Scout task, directing members of his troop.

L, O & S Nature and Rail Trail

Past the garden and to the southwest is a sign marking the entrance to a trail that was established along the old railroad bed of the Lancaster, Oxford & Southern Railroad (L, O & S). The rails were removed in November 1919 but the Society’s Board of Directors thought it historically important, since the train ran through the property and a station had been built by the Swift family in 1874 when they occupied the Fulton House. The trail runs through several habitats including woodland, meadow and wetlands and provides views of wildlife and wildflowers.   The 1-1/2 mile trail was established for visitors who enjoy the outdoors. It was dedicated on November 12, 2016. 

Biography of RobertFulton

Robert Fulton’s Early Years

Robert Fulton is remembered chiefly for having built the steamboat Clermont, which in 1807 successfully made the trip up the Hudson River against winds and strong currents. The versatile Robert Fulton was also accomplished in other fields. It is not usually known that the great inventor started his career as an artist and that his miniature portraits are reputed to be among the finest produced in this country.

Robert Fulton was born in Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, on November 14, 1765 in a little stone tavern.  In later years the section in which he was born became Fulton Township, named in honor of him. His father, Robert Fulton, Sr., was an Irish immigrant who came to Lancaster in 1735. His mother was named Mary Smith.  Robert Sr. was a tailor and small-time trader whose experiment with farming proved a failure.  In 1772 the Fulton family farmstead was sold at auction and the family moved back to Lancaster, on Penn Square.  According to several biographers of Fulton, his father went back to tailoring and was a respected member of the local community, leaving only a small legacy when he died two years after the family returned to Lancaster. There is no record of how the Fulton family survived the next few years, but young Fulton was tutored at the school of Caleb Johnson, a Tory Quaker.  Eighteenth century Lancaster was a famous center for craftsmen, and Fulton showed an early interest in the workshops which had built many of the wagons that rolled westward across America, as well as much of the weaponry for the American revolutionary forces. 

Fulton nurtured his early artistic talents by painting tavern and shopkeeper signs, as well as etching and engraving firearms for Isch and Messersmith Gunsmiths.  Since Lancaster became a supply center for the Continental Army, American soldiers were a constant presence (as guards for British and Hessian prisoners of war), and this closeness to muskets and cannons laid the foundation for Fulton’s later interest in the weapons of explosion.

Fulton, the Painter

When he was in his mid-teens, Fulton was apprenticed to Jeremiah Andrews, a Philadelphia jeweler. Fulton was assigned the task of painting lockets and pendants with human hair, often of a deceased relative. It is probable that Fulton worked on miniature paintings that might grace a locket or brooch, and he gained a reputation as “Fulton, Robert, Miniature painter, Corner of 2d and Walnut Streets” — he is described as a miniaturist, apparently working on his own account. It was about this time that he managed to acquire enough money to settle his mother and her brother on a small farm in Hopewell Township, Washington County, and to provide further plots of land for his brothers and sisters.

By early 1786, Fulton came up with enough money to treat himself to a health resort - the Berkley Springs - at Bath, Virginia (now West Virginia), as a cure for some ailment of his lungs which resembled tuberculosis. In Bath, Fulton met James Rumsey, who was experimenting with a steam pump to bring water in at the bow of a boat and then drive it through a pipe out the stern, thus propelling the boat. Rumsey conducted his experiments on the Potomac River. However, Fulton was still more interested in painting than steamboats, and the recollections of those who knew him make it clear that his one overall ambition was to become wealthy.

Following his treatment at Berkley Springs, Fulton returned to Philadelphia and opened his own miniature-painting and hair-working shop on the west side of Front Street, near the Delaware River. According to biographer Cadwallader Colden, a friend and Fulton’s lawyer for a number of years, it was at the Berkley Springs spa that Fulton was advised by “some gentleman” to go to England to study painting with more celebrated artists than Philadelphia could offer. Fulton decided in the summer of 1787, during the Constitutional Convention, to sail for Europe to study art. Fulton left for London with a letter of introduction to the American painter Benjamin West, who had established himself as a founding member of London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Family tradition says the letter of introduction was written by Benjamin Franklin, who would have known West from his earlier travels in England. West helped Fulton find lodgings in London and took him on as a student. Unfortunately, not one of Fulton’s paintings from this period survives.

Fulton’s first foray into the world of inventions was the design for a marble-cutting machine, a model of which won him a medal by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce.  His London friendships with the Duke of Bridgewater, who built his own canal, and the Earl of Stanhope, a great experimenter, inspired Fulton to abandon art for civil engineering between 1802 and 1794.  Sometime around 1794, Fulton sought his fortune planning a small system of canals to transport goods inland, and designing machines for cutting marble and spinning flax with a powered loom.  Fulton also fostered his interest in steam propulsion with a boat in a correspondence with Lord Stanhope.

Robert Fulton in Paris

In the spring of 1787, during a lull in the hostilities between England and France, Fulton journeyed to Paris to seek his fortune with his canal schemes. Fulton became close friends with the American poet and businessman Joel Barlow and his wife Ruth. These Paris years — coinciding with Napoleon’s emergence as a great military leader—were extremely influential on Fulton’s future career. His career focus shifted from painting and canal design to the steamboat and steam navigation. Fulton designed a submarine, the Nautilus, which he tried to sell to Napoleon.

The submarine’s appearance was based on David Bushnell’s failed American Turtle submarine used during the American Revolution. Fulton’s Nautilus was a cigar-shaped vessel, just large enough for two men who could submerge for up to six hours. Fulton’s submarine was powered by a hand-cranked propeller and could submerge, which was a great advance on Bushnell’s model. Two underwater trials failed, and the French government was not convinced by Fulton’s submarine design. Nevertheless, Fulton firmly believed that his devices would put an end to naval warfare.

Fulton’s Steamboat, The Clermont

As for the development of the steamboat, for which Fulton ultimately became famous, there were literally dozens of precedents for the boats he had built in Paris and tested on the Seine River. Fulton achieved his future success with steamboats by becoming acquainted with British, French and American promoters of industrialism.  By 1801, Fulton had befriended the American minister to France, Robert R. Livingston from New York State.  Livingston was also interested in steamboats and laid much of the groundwork from the Boulton and Watt steam engine company to study the feasibility of making a steam engine which might be used to power a boat.  Fulton, with the backing of both Livingston and Barlow, succeeded in bringing a Boulton and Watt engine to New York in December 1806 and began constructing the hull for his pioneer steamboat trials on the Hudson River using the Clermont.

Robert Fulton commissioned Charles Browne to construct a wooden hull using the components of the Boulton and Watt engine at Corlear’s Hook on the East River in New York City. When finished, the steamboat was towed to Fulton’s workshop at Paulus Hook Ferry on the Hudson River. Livingston continued to enforce and extend the patent monopoly created with Fulton to protect against rivals in the competition for steam.  When completed, the steamboat was 1,540 feet long, but only 13 feet wide, with a square stern.  Two paddle wheels hung over the sides.  The steamboat’s first trials were made in 1807, running up and down from New York to Livingston’s estate at Clermont on the Hudson.  The name of his first boat is a matter of dispute: most sources say it was the Clermont, but others that it was the North River.  After the successful first voyage up the Hudson River, Chancellor Livingston predicted that steamboats would one day cross the oceans.  Livingston also announced that his niece Harriet was engaged to be married to Robert Fulton.

In January 1808, Fulton married Harriet Livingston and became a family man: by the time of his death in 1815, Fulton had four children.  He continued to build new boats — 21 in all — and the success of the steamboat very rapidly began to transform America.  Fulton’s steamboat became the most important form of transport before the arrival of the railways and a great symbol of American industrial progress and wealth.  Fulton’s steamboats were also transformed into military machines, which went against a central ambition of his life.  However, there were few places in America that Fulton’s steamboat did not transform commercial processes, social customs, the patterns of migration and growth, and the speed of travel and communication.  The technical skills and artistry of Robert Fulton’s steamboat demonstrated a great triumph of human technology over nature.

Robert Fulton died on February 24, 1815, at the early age of forty-nine and was buried in Old Trinity Churchyard in Manhattan, New York. He did not live to see the launching of the world’s first steam-powered war ship, which he had designed for use in the War of 1812 with Great Britain. 

Robert Fulton’s Birthplace, also known as “Fulton House”

For nearly two centuries after the Fultons moved to Lancaster, the house was owned and occupied by several generations of the Swift family. Here, during the last half of the nineteenth century, a small commercial hamlet grew up along the line of the Peach Bottom Railway, later the Lancaster, Oxford and Southern (“L, O & S”) Railroad , which ran through the Swift farm.  Known as “Fulton House,” this tiny cluster of buildings consisted of tobacco and grain warehouses, a store and post office, all operated by the Swift family.

In 1965 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania acquired the site from the Swift family, and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (“PHMC”) restored and furnished the house to represent its appearance during Fulton’s lifetime. In addition, one area of the house contains exhibits chronicling the life and accomplishments of Robert Fulton.

In 1966 the Robert Fulton Birthplace was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (#66000670).  From 1982 to 2017, members of the Southern Lancaster County (“Solanco”) Historical Society, under a management agreement with the PHMC, had provided routine maintenance of the Birthplace and guided tours for the public. In exchange for these services, Solanco Historical Society maintained its archives, office and meeting place at the warehouse opposite the Fulton House, at 1932 Robert Fulton Highway.

In February 2017, the deed to the Birthplace property was transferred to Solanco Historical Society by the Commonwealth’s legislature and signed into law by Governor Thomas Wolf.  The Historical Society is now fully responsible for the preservation and upkeep of the five buildings on the property, as well as for continuing to keep the Fulton House open to the public. 

FOR FURTHER READING

Cochran, Thomas C. Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America. New York: Oxford University Press. 1981.

Colden, Cadwallader. The Life of Robert Fulton. New York: Kirk & Mercein. 1817.

Flexner, James Thomas. Steamboats Come True. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1978.

Kroll, Steven. Robert Fulton: From Submarine to Steamboat. New York: Holiday House. 1999.

Morgan, John S. Robert Fulton. New York: Mason and Charter. 1977.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream. New York: The Free Press. 2001.

Roth, Mike and Stanley T. White, Fulton House, The History of the Robert Fulton Birthplace, (c) 2018, published by Mike Roth and Stanley T. White. Available for sale at Solanco Historical Society’s gift shop and archive warehouse, 1932 Robert Fulton Highway (Rt. 222), P.O. Box 33, Quarryville, PA 17566 (Fulton Township) (717-548-2679). For further information on books available from these authors, connect to this site: https://rothandwhite.site/.

The Granary at the Robert Fulton Birthplace