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Read Ebook: Robert Fulton by Sutcliffe Alice Crary
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Ebook has 552 lines and 49872 words, and 12 pages
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AN OLD-TIME FOURTH OF JULY 1
ROBERT FULTON'S BOYHOOD 10
PAINTING PORTRAITS AND MINIATURES 20
THE GIFT OF A FARM 29
STUDYING ART IN ENGLAND 37
FROM ART TO INVENTION 48
ACHIEVEMENTS IN PARIS 62
BUILDING THE FIRST SUBMARINE 73
BUILDING THE FIRST STEAMBOAT 84
IN HOLLAND AND ENGLAND 100
EXPERIMENTS WITH A SUBMARINE 107
SOME EARLY STEAMBOATS 121
STEAMBOATS AND SUBMARINES 155
FERRY-BOATS AND RIVER-BOATS 172
FULTON'S HOME AND FULTON'S HONORS 183
FACING PAGE
ROBERT FULTON'S BIRTHPLACE 8
THE BUILDING FORMERLY OCCUPIED BY CALEB JOHNSON'S SCHOOL 34
THE WASHWOMAN; FULTON'S EARLIEST KNOWN DRAWING 54
THE FULTON MEDAL 134
THE WIFE AND TWO OF THE CHILDREN OF ROBERT FULTON 184
A child of Lancaster, upon this land Here was he born by Conowingo's shade; Along these banks our youthful Fulton strayed Dreaming of Art. Then Science touched his hand, Leading him onward, when, beneath her wand, Wonders appeared that never more shall fade: He triumphed o'er the Winds and swiftly made The giant, Steam, subservient to command.
How soft the sunlight lies upon the lea Around his home, where boyhood days were sped! These checkered shadows on the fading grass Symbol his fortunes, as they fleeting pass: "He did mankind a service,"--could there be A tribute more ennobling to the dead!
LLOYD MIFFLIN.
ROBERT FULTON
AN OLD-TIME FOURTH OF JULY
American Independence was young in 1778,--only two years old. The patriotism awakened by the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia was active as this second anniversary of our nation's birth approached, and sturdy Pennsylvanians, glad of our country's freedom from English rule, planned a Fourth of July celebration.
In Lancaster, less than seventy miles from Philadelphia, the wise men of the town council foresaw waste and tumult if the young patriots carried out the programme they had arranged. Upon the first day of July the Council discussed the matter and passed this resolution, which they publicly posted:
"The Excessive Heat of the Weather, the Present Scarcity of Candles, and Other Considerations, Induce the Council to Recommend to the Inhabitants to Forbear Illuminating the City on Saturday Evening Next, July 4th.
"TIMOTHY MATLACK, Secretary."
We can imagine the disappointment of the Lancaster boys when they read this notice. Angry groups around the sign-board evinced their displeasure, and some of the bolder ones declared that they would light their candles anyway!
But one conscientious thirteen-year-old boy tried to think of some other method to show patriotism. As the town council forbade the use of candles, he would not disobey their law; perhaps he could prepare a more novel celebration in honor of the holiday.
He had some candles which he had saved for the event; now they were of no use. He therefore took them to a brush-maker who kept powder and shot for sale, and offered to trade them for gunpowder. The brush-maker, surprised that the boy would part with his candles when they were so scarce, asked his reason. The lad replied:
"Our rulers have asked the people not to illuminate their windows and streets. All good citizens should obey law, so I have decided instead to light the heavens with sky-rockets."
The dealer, although amused, was glad to get the candles and promptly gave gunpowder in exchange. Then the boy went to another store, where he bought several large sheets of cardboard. The clerk was about to roll the sheets for easy handling, but his customer protested:
"I wish to carry them as they are."
The curiosity of this man also was aroused. He remembered that the lad was said to be "always trying to invent something." As he handed them over he asked:
"What are you going to do with them?"
Eagerly the boy answered: "We are forbidden to light our windows with candles. I'm going to shoot my candles through the air."
"Tut! Tut!" exclaimed the man, laughingly. "That's an impossibility."
"No, sir," the boy responded, with a flash of enthusiasm. "There is nothing impossible."
This is a true story, told by an old-time Lancaster historian. The thirteen-year-old boy was Robert Fulton, who became the inventor of steam navigation.
It is good to carry the story further in imagination. That group of boys who gathered in the town during the twilight of Independence Day, 1778, saw a few spluttering rockets shoot skyward from the hand of a lad determined to carry the good news of freedom to a higher horizon than that of the home windows of Lancaster. A flash! A whirr! and the light arose, zigzagged its message through the darkness, like fiery handwriting in the sky, and then died away. But the fine courage and courtesy of the boy who would not disobey a local law, although he felt a national appeal to patriotic jubilee,--these tokens of character have not faded. They prophesied the boy's success in life. He foretold it in his words, "Nothing is impossible."
Robert Fulton's father was one of three brothers, David, John, and Robert. They were of Scotch origin, and came to America from Kilkenny, Ireland, about 1730. Robert, the youngest, settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where in 1759 he married Miss Mary Smith, daughter of Joseph Smith of Oxford Township, and bought for their first home a brick dwelling on the northeast corner of Penn Square, in the center of the town. In this house they lived until 1764. They took an active interest 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 , 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 sturdy crane swinging in the sooty shadows where Mrs. Fulton hung her kettle to boil, in those distant days of pioneer life. Joseph Swift, of Philadelphia, wrote in after years that his grandmother "well remembered in her youth the preparations which a visit to Aunt Fulton required in the way of baking, boiling and roasting, and in getting ready the camp equipage which the journey through the wilderness required. It was only less formidable than a journey across the Atlantic."
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