page_title: Fulton, Texas
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Fulton, Texas / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Sign on the Fulton, Texas waterfront explaining the industrial heritage of the area
context_page_description: Fulton is a town in Aransas County, Texas, United States. As of the 2010 census, this South Texas coastal fishing community had a population of 1,358. The town is named for George Ware Fulton, a land developer in the area.
context_section_description: Fulton was founded in 1866, and named by George Ware Fulton, Sr., whose wife Harriet Smith Fulton inherited 11,000 acres 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 rail roads and building bridges.  When Harriet inherited 48,000 acres of 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 Fultons owned thousands of cattle wandering on their extensive lands, and formed a cattle company with others.  Mr. Fulton built slaughter houses, and patented a chilled slaughter house, 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.
  In 1930, some evidence of a prehistoric settlement was found in the Fulton area, possibly Karankawan.
  On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Fulton at category 4 intensity.
caption: Sign on the Fulton waterfront
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