Robert Fulton

								

in local affairs, for Robert Fulton belonged to every organization then
formed; to be sure, there were only three, for the town was small. He
was secretary of the Union Fire Company, a charter member of the Juliana
Library, and a founder of the Presbyterian Church.
It is pleasant to think of the young couple settling their new home on
Penn Square (where not many years before the Indians had a colony), near
a spring of clear water under a giant hickory tree. It was on this very
spot that the chieftains of “Hickory Tribe,” as they termed themselves,
met to confer with William Penn, the wise and kindly Quaker.
Governor Thomas Pownall visited Lancaster in 1754 and wrote that it was
“a pretty and considerable town, increasing fast and growing rich.” So we
can be certain that when Robert Fulton’s parents established a home of
their own on Penn Square, they felt they had a bright future before them.
Two little daughters, Elizabeth and Isabella, were born to Mr. and Mrs.
Fulton while they lived in this house and were among the first children
to be christened in the new church. Mr. Fulton had a strong voice and was
chosen to “lead the psalm” in the old Court House, where services were
held until the church could be built. He sang the opening words of each
division of the psalm and the congregation joined in unison for the later
words.
In 1763 Mr. Fulton signed the charter for the town library, the third
to be established in the American colonies. Thomas and William Penn,
Esquires of the Province, drafted the papers and named the library
“Juliana” after Thomas Penn’s wife. He was a son of the famous old
William Penn, who had conferred with the Hickory Indians, and for whom
the state of Pennsylvania had been named.
The new church, the Juliana Library, and the Union Fire Company, together
with his business, kept Robert Fulton well occupied, but they yielded
friendly comradeship and varied interests. In 1765 Mr. Fulton sold
his Lancaster home and moved his family to a farm of more than three
hundred acres on Conowingo Creek, in Little Britain Township, which
he had purchased the preceding November. It lay sixty-five miles from
Philadelphia, but not many from Lancaster, so they were not far from
their friends, though they had to give up active work in the town.
The plastered stone farm-house to which the Fulton family moved is still
standing by the country cross-roads. A wide sloping roof shelters the
two-story building and overhangs a porch at the eastern end. There the
ground slopes to the valley where the Conowingo Creek, a picturesque
stream, flows on its quiet way to join the Susquehanna River. It is
a place of great beauty and may well have proved attractive to early
settlers. The low-ceiled parlors remain as they were during Mr. and Mrs.
Fulton’s occupancy, and the upper bedrooms show broad window sills of
great age. The fireplace of the old-time kitchen also is unchanged, the