Connecting Steamboat Robert Fulton's Family and The Fultons of Lisburn
Consistently in biographies of Steamboat Robert Fulton it states that his Father, also Robert, was came to Pennsylvania from Kilkenny, Ireland. This stumped me for many years. I knew something about the "Plantation" or Scottish settlements in Ireland and the vast majority of Scottish settlers to Ireland settled in the far north in the region called Ulster. Kilkenny is the the far SE of Ireland far from any documented Scottish Plantations that I am aware of. My some time I thought this might be an error. Since so many local place names in Ireland start with "Kil" I thought maybe Kilkenny was a corruption of some other place no one accept locals likely every heard of, probably in Northern Ireland, that sounded a bit like Kilkenny and since Kilkenny as a county name was familiar the name Kilkenny stuck. One choice I thought might be a likely candidate was the Parish of Killinchy in County Down. referenced in Hope's book "Memoirs of the Fultons of Lisburn" as the place where one member of that group died in the 1820's. However, I am now convinced that Steamboat Robert's family did come to Pennsylvania from County Kilkenny in Ireland.
In Sir Theodore Hope's book on The Fultons of Lisburn he mentions a reference to the earliest member of that group of Fultons in papers obtained from his great Uncle John Williamson Fulton was a William Fulton of Kilkenny who died in1638. When I saw this, I had almost the same initial reaction as to the Kilkenny reference to Steamboat Robert's family. Why would an early progenitor of the Fultons of Lisburn be in far away Kilkenny?
The obvious first thing that occured to me to lend credibility to both references is the common link to Kilkenny. I did not think that could be a coincidence. I have an original copy of the first biography of Steamboat Robert Fulton written in 1817 just 2 years after his death by a close friend. It states that Robert Fulton's Father Robert Sr came as a boy from Kilkenny in Ireland. So the legend of a Kilkenny connection for Steamboat Robert's family goes back to at least 1816. Also, Hope does not reference Steamboat Robert at all in his book, so he is clearly not trying to connect Steamboat Robert to the Lisburn group. In fact Hope specifically states that he thinks it is possible but unlikely that many or even any of the American Fultons are branches of his Lisburn group. So we have two Fulton Families, one in Lisburn, County Down, Northern Ireland and the other in Southeastern Pennsylvania both referencing a connection to a far away place, County Kilkenny Ireland, which has not commonly recognized historical connection to either place or to Scottish settlement. My theory is that this cannot be a coincidence and shows that a Fulton Kilkenny connection is likely true that therefore, the Steamboat Robert Fulton ancestors were very likely a branch of the Fultons of Lisburn.
Connections between the Lisburn area and County Kilkenny:
So, are there any connections between Lisburn and Kilkenny? Well, yes there are.
1. The landlords of the entire area around Lisburn and Dirriaghy in NW County Down and SE County Antrim, Northern Ireland were the Lord Conway Family. The Conway family also had lands in the Kilkenny area as researched by Trevor Fulton. See his link: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~jennings/trevor/conway.htm It is possibly that a William Fulton of the early Lisburn group ended up in Kilkenny due to these Conway connections. Trevor has also posted much additional information on the Fultons of the Lisburn Ireland area.
2. The linen connection. The Williamite Wars ended about 1697. These were the wars that confirmed a change in who was King of England from James II to William of Orange. James was Catholic and William a Protestant. The Protestants of Northern Ireland supported William. Even today, many Prostestants of Northern Ireland refer to themselves as "Orangemen". The Williamite Wars resulted in much devastation and economic disruption in Northern Ireland. William of Orange, now William III of England invited and subsidized a merchant with expertise in the linen industry in Flanders (part of William III's possessions in Europe) Louis Crommelin, a French Huguenot whose family had escaped France to Flanders some years earlier, to come to Lisburn to set up a linen industry in 1698. Linen was at that time and for much of prior history the most common type of fine fabric. It was made from processing the fibers of the flax plant and spinning these fibers in threads and then weaving them into many different types of cloth. Even today, although most things like sheets are made of cotton or synthetic fibers we still refer to them as linens as they were made from flax in those days. Louis Crommelin's enterprise centered in Lisburn was a great success and even today production of fabric is a large industry in Northern Ireland. Louis Crommelin's linen industry centered in Lisburn is discussed at length in the book "The Huguenot Settlements in Ireland" by Grace Lawless Lee, Dublin 1935. In this book Ms. Lee states that although Louis Crommelin centered his linen enterprises on the Lisburn area, he had three assistants he sent into other parts of the country to superintend the cultivation of flax and finishing of fabric. One of these assistants was his son William Crommelin whom he settled in Kilkenny. Perhaps Kilkenny was picked because of a family link of the Conway's to both places. In any event this linen industry connection of the Crommelin family provides a direct connection between Lisburn specifically and Kilkenny. We also know from Hope's book that several members of the Lisburn Fulton Family, including those closely related to Hope, were very active and prosperous as merchants in the linen industry. Perhaps Louis Crommelin chose Kilkenny as a branch of his linen enterprises because local Fultons in Lisburn had family connections there already. Or perhaps the 1638 date Hope places for the death of William Fulton of Kilkenny is incorrect and the Fultons of Kilkenny went there from Lisburn because of Louis Crommelin's planting a branch of his linen enterprise in Kilkenny, which may be more likely. The 1638 death date of William of Kilkenny is not documented in any Lisburn area parish register. It comes from notes given to Hope from his Great Uncle John Williamson Fulton in 1877. The net is the linen industry and the Louis Crommelin connection provides a direct link between specifically Lisburn and County Kilkenny. In the 1849 Topographical Dictionary of Ireland under the article for Kilkenny, vol II, page 73, it states, "The LINEN trade was introduced towards of close of the 17th century, and prospered for fifty or sixty years." This could indicate another reason for a Fulton Family in Kilkenny to migrate to America, that they were tied to the linen industry and that industry after some good years began to fail in that part of Ireland.
3. Were there any documented Fultons in County Kilkenny? Yes. Hope himself researched this to his best ability considering the times he was working in and found a will of a William Fulton who died possessed of considerable property in 1771 leaving a wife and daugther. This is of course a number of years later than when Steamboat Robert Fulton's family left Kilkenny probably prior to 1730, but it does document that a Fulton was there. In addition, a transcript of marriage licenses for Church of Ireland from the Ossory Diocese (covers basically County Kilkenny) were found in 1934 which document several hundred marriages in Kilkenny from 1739 to 1804. I reviewed this list as published in the The Irish Genealogist and found the marriage of William Fulton of Kilrush in the County of Kilkenny, Gent.on November 7, 1748 to Elizabeth Dolland of Upper Court in said co. and Dioc. of Ossory, both of the Prostestant Religion. Hope was unaware of the existence of these records as he was told all old records were missing. This is the same William Fulton that Hope references as dieing in Kilkenny in 1771. So he didn't just happen to die there, he lived there for at least 23 years.
4. Was there a Scottish settlement in Kilkenny? It appears yes there was. I reviewed 600 of the marriage records referenced above covering 1739-1771 and there are many Scottish names. In addition there were a few specific entries of interest. One was the 1745 marriage of George Mathew of Thomastown and Isabella Brownlowe, "youngest daughter of William Brownlowe late of Lugan in the Co. of Armagh Esq..." Lurgan is a town just a few miles west of Lisburn in the same Diocese of Dromore as Lisburn. Lurgan was also known as a center of the linen industry. So this shows another connection of people from the area around Lisburn who lived moved to Kilkenny. There is also a marriage of a John Crosley of the City of Kilkenny, Cardmaker, on Oct. 9, 1749. A Cardmaker is a function of the linen industry and Crosley is a rather uncommon surname also found in Lisburn and in fact a family that intermarried with the Fultons of Lisburn. Other surnames found in these Kilkenny marriage records include: Kennedy, McKinly, Holiday, Orr, Cunningham, Stewart, Heron, and Hutcheson, Scottish surnames also found frequently in Counties Down and Antrim in Northern Ireland. Finally, although certainly a high liklihood of coincidence due to the commonality of the surname there was a Joseph Smith and other Smith's in the registers. A Joseph Smith, from somewhere in Ireland, was Steamboat Robert Fulton's Grandfather through his Mother Mary Smith. In addition there was a Presbyterian Church in nearby Waterford as early as 1673 and its second minister was an Alexander Sinclair described in the book "The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 1610-1982" as "a Belfastman of Antrim Presbytery" who arrived in Waterford in 1680 and was ordained to preach there in 1686. In addition this same book references a Presbyterian Church in Clonmel in nearby County Tipperary also by 1673. Clonmel is on the river Suir in the southeastern part of Tipperary near the Kilkenny border. You don't find Presbyerians in those days without finding Scots, so the presence of these two Presbyterian Churches in far SE Ireland is a clear indication there were Scottish communities there in those days.
5. Finally I suggest referring to the page on the place name Rising Sun. Although this does not connect Kilkenny with Lisburn, it does provide some interesting clues to possible connections between Kilkenny, Ireland and places in America in Cecil County, Maryland and Dearborn County, Indiana, associated with Steamboat Robert Fulton. There was and still is a Rising Sun Inn in Kilkenny on the road between Kilkenny and Waterford that was founded in 1644.
When you add all the above up, I believe it makes a compelling case that Steamboat Robert Fulton's Family did come from Kilkenny, Ireland and that they were a branch of the Fultons of Lisburn. There were famines in Ireland in the late 1720's including the area of Kilkenny. This coincides with the approximate time of arrival of Steamboat Robert's ancestors in SE PA about 1730. I think there was a Fulton Family in Kilkenny, who had origins in Lisburn and had moved to Kilkenny likely around 1698 in connection with the linen industry. The linen industry did not prosper in Kilkenny as it did in Northern Ireland. Around 1726-1729 with the linen industry weak, a famine gripping the land, and being among a small minority of Scottish Presbyterian Family in a primarily Catholic area, I believe Steamboat Robert Fulton's ancestors, perhaps including his Smith family and likely including other Scottish Presbyterian families, packed up and got on a ship probably at either Dublin, Waterford, or Cork and sailed for the Delaware River. I think it likely there were in contact with relatives in the Lisburn area or relatives from the Lisburn area who had arleady moved to SE PA and coordinated their move to a common area most probably in Nottingham Township, Chester County, PA., and from there spread into Lancaster, York, and Cumberland Counties in PA., and Cecil and Baltimore (now Harford) Counties in Maryland.