LEGEND AND FACT IN THE FULBRIGHT GENEALOGY
Bill Eddleman

All families have legends about their history and ancestors. The Fulbrights are no exception. Every one of our families have legends about ancestry, and about the personalities of these people in our past. My dictionary defines legend as: A story coming down from the past; one popularly accepted as historical although not verifiable. Are these legends true or false? There are several possibilities. First, the legends may have been faithfully handed down to the present, although not really true. That is, the legend may be true insofar as the teller heard it, but may not be the way things actually happened. Second, many of these legends have been handed down by people with a rich lifetime's worth of memories. Some of these memories may mingle with time, so that parts of several stories may be handed down as a single story. Third, there may be a grain of truth in the story. The remainder may be details the teller includes to make the story more interesting. Lastly, the legend may be perfectly true!

We Fulbrights have a rich tradition of legends from a number of sources. First of all, most legends are handed down by word of mouth. Indeed, most of the legends I will discuss were handed down first by word of mouth. The earliest written legends about the Fulbrights appeared in a book entitled A Reminiscent History of the Ozarks, which was published in 1894. Several legends about the John Fulbright line, one son of Johann Wilhelm the immigrant, appear in this book, which showcased many of the prominent descendants of this line in Missouri and Arkansas. In about 1930, John William Fulbright collected family history on the descendants of Johann Wilhelm, and wrote the first comprehensive family history of this branch. The booklet was prepared after the first of the Fulbright reunions in Missouri. Many of our legends and suppositions date back to the research and descendancy charts of Amos Medford of Haywood County, North Carolina. He was a descendant of Jacob Sr., another son of Johann Wilhelm, and many older Fulbright historians have copies of his charts. Next, my uncle Riley Eddleman published The Eddleman-Fulbright Families in 1981. He did not, unfortunately, cite the source for many of his suppositions on the family, although he does list sources in the back of the book. Most of his Fulbright research (other than his own) comes from the earlier sources and from research done by several Fulbright descendants in Southeast Missouri. I should not fail to mention all the other Fulbright researchers who have prepared family histories on their own branches of the family, and which have served as another source of Fulbright legend.

In family history research, however, new records become available all the time that can shed light on these legends. That is, they become verifiable. I will examine a few of these legends as they relate to the early Fulbright families in America, and see how well they compare with new information that has come to light on the Fulbrights in the last few years.

First of all, I will discuss legends of the Johann Wilhelm line. To review, Johann Wilhelm and his wife Christina had the following children that we can document from his will:

Johann Georg, who married Margaret Reinhardt; Jacob who married Elizabeth Weisel(?); Mary who married John Link; Catherine who married Johannes Bollinger; Margaret who married a Crites and (possibly) John Link; Elizabeth who married a Killian; Dorothea who married Elias Moyers, Jr.; Christina who married Benjamin Taylor; and John who married Elizabeth Coulter(?).

The oldest supposed legend about the European origins of the Fulbrights is that Johann Wilhelm was born near Berlin and that his father was Petri Volbrecht. This is originally from the work of Amos Medford. However, repeated attempts to confirm this legend as fact have not been successful, and the source of his information is not known.

The second scenario is that Johann Wilhelm was a son of Hans Hiob Volbrecht and Maria Juditha Calenius. He was born in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany in 1717, and apprenticed to a great uncle in Basel, Switzerland to learn the weaver's trade. From 1734 to 1740 he mastered the trade, and then took his funds and traveled to Rotterdam by boat on the Rhine River. After paying tolls on the river, he was broke, so indentured himself for 5 years and sailed to the New World on the ship Robert and Alice, arriving in Philadelphia on December 3, 1740. The origin of this legend is the research of Riley Eddleman. I have his files, and there was a Hans Hiob. However, he married Maria Juditha AFTER 1717. The rest of this lineage is pieced together without much evidence from family group sheets in the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. There is no proof to connect any of those individuals in the lineage. In addition, Ed Stout has tried to relocate the records of indenturement my uncle found in the Morman Library, without success.

One of the most persistent and contentious legends in the Fulbright genealogy is that Johann Wilhelm married Christianna or Christina Hallstead, daughter of Timothy Hallstead III, a Long Island merchant. Ed Stout recently told me that apparently this legend originated with Amos Medford's research. In one of Medford's lineage charts, he indicated Christianna Hailstead with a (7) after the surname. This legend is doubtful for several reasons. First, the Hallstead genealogists have no record of it. Secondly, the first recorded baptism of a child of Johann Wilhelm and Christina is that of Johann Georg, born on 28 February 1746, and baptized on 9 March 1746 in the Williams Township Congregation of Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The sponsors for the baptism were Johann Georg Schuck and his wife Rosina Barbara, who are proved as parents of Christina by the elder Schuck's will, in which she is mentioned as the wife of William Fulbright. Thirdly, the marriage of a poor German immigrant to an English merchant's daughter seems unlikely. Indeed, one North Carolina researcher told me recently that the ministers in the Lutheran and Reformed congregations actively discouraged intermarriage with those outside the church during the time before 1800.

Also in The Eddleman-Fulbright Families, Riley Eddleman mentions that William and Christina moved to North Carolina in 1769, and purchased land from Richard and Hannah Lewis on Lyle's Creek in present-day Catawba County. The family never moved from that location, but my uncle mentions at least 2 moves. The county boundaries moved, not the family, so that Lyle's Creek was in Rowan, Burke, Lincoln, and finally Catawba counties.

Jacob, son of Johann Wilhelm and Chris-tina, was married to an Elizabeth. Often-times, her surname is written Wiser, Wizer, Weisel or Witzel. In The Eddleman -Fulbright Families, Elizabeth is listed as a granddaughter of the Pennsylvania Indian agent and Iroquois interpreter Conrad Weiser. There is no proof for this conten-tion, and it is not mentioned in the Weiser genealogy. Jacob's cousin Jacob Shook married Isabella Weisel, so we suspect Elizabeth was also a Weisel. In this case, I know of no definitive proof for the surname of Jacob's wife.

Amos Medford's writings state that two and possibly three sons of Johann Wilhelm and Christina died in the Revolutionary War Battle of the Cowpens on 8 January 1781. Some have suggested George died there, but if so his estate was not settled for 9 years!

This is highly unlikely for a young man with a family! The other sons mentioned are Frederick and (less often) Henry. There is NO evidence in Pennsylvania or North Carolina for these two sons, although a Jurg Fr. Volprecht is listed as a witness to the marriage of Johannes Vogel and Anna Marg. Vakin on 13 May 1757 in the records of the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Philadelphia, Pa. If this man is a relative, though, he would be closer to the age of Jo-hann Wilhelm, and would NOT be a son because the date is too early.

The oldest mention in print of Elizabeth Coulter as the wife of John, son of Johann Wilhelm and Christina, is the 1894 book, A Reminiscent History of The Ozark Region, which has biographies of several descendants of John through his son William. She is mentioned as Elizabeth Coulter. We Ful-bright family historians were embarrassed to learn about a year and a half ago that there is NO documentation to support Elizabeth as a Coulter. The Coulter genealogists have no record of an Elizabeth, daughter of Martin, Sr. Martin, Sr. has no estate settlement in the North Carolina Archives, so we can't use this as a source for his family. The source for the children of Martin Coulter, Sr. is a statement that his son left dated 6 June 1846, in which he lists: My father was Martin Coulter. He came to this country in 1750 [actually on the ship Dragon on 26 Sept. 1749]. My mother was Catherine Rosanna Boone, cousin of Daniel Boone... brothers John and Philip and sister Catherine.

This one has some suggestions that it is true, however. John and Elizabeth had one son named Martin, and a grandson who was named Levi Coulter. There are two possi-bilities to be checked: either the Coulter ge-nealogists are wrong, and the family lost touch with Elizabeth, so that Martin, Jr. was only listing his living siblings; or she belongs to a different Coulter family.

Johann Wilhelm mentions daughters Mary Link and Margaret Crites in his will. How-ever, many pedigree charts in southeast Mis-souri mention John and Margaret Link as an-cestors. Some have even suggested that Jo-hann Wilhelm confused the two daughters in his will. I don't buy this one! Alice Spill-man, a Cape Girardeau Fulbright and Link researcher, suggests the following: John Link and Mary Fulbright were married, as were Peter Crites and Margaret Fulbright. Peter Crites and Mary Link died, and John Link remarried Margaret. She cites land records that mention the wive's names, but I have not seen these.

Part of the confusion here may be because family legend was set in stone in the Link Gladish Cemetery in Cape Girardeau County. A grave marker lists John Link, Margaret Fulbright Link, Daniel Link, and Eleanor Keepers Link. This stone has always been presumed to be fact, when actually it is information handed down by word of mouth. The four names appear on one tombstone, and this stone was placed in their memory during a family reunion held in 1935. Daniel was the first person buried here. Interestingly, the 1816 death date for John Link on this stone is incorrect. He appears on a tax list in 1822, and his estate settlement did not occur until early 1828.

Traditionally, Jacob Fulbright, Jr., son of Jacob Sr. and grandson of Johann Wilhelm, married Barbara Plunkett in North Carolina. They are the ancestors of many of the Southeast Missouri Fulbrights. The source of this legend is not clear, but the name appears in several family histories I have seen. Recently, court records located and copied by Roger and LaNeil Gephart have strongly suggested Barbara was a daughter of Dr. Peter Plunk and his wife Barbara. Jacob Jr. and wife Barbara had a prolonged set of lawsuits against the administrators of Dr. Peter's estate (Jacob Fulbright Sr. and Peter Carpenter) in which they were suing for their share of the estate. In this case, the Plunk genealogists agree that Barbara was a daughter of Dr. Peter. I know of no evidence that would confirm the traditional Plunkett story.

The account of John William Fulbright had some colorful legends about John, son of Johann Wilhelm and Christina: in about 1815, John moved his family to the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase area. He moved to a district that later became Washington County, Missouri. He settled on Coataway or Huzzah Creek where he lived the balance of his life. John Fulbright had the remarkable distinction of hewing his own coffin from a walnut log, and chiseling his own tomb from a solid rock on the hillside over-looking Huzzah Creek. when he died in 1825, he was buried in these shrouds of his own handiwork.

The problem is, we have not unequivocal evidence that John was in Missouri! Two of his sons and a John Fulbright, (possibly him, possibly his son) appear on a list of those having stray livestock in the early 1820s in Washington County, Missouri. Son William also received a land grant in Washington County. Last year, I confirmed that John had died in 1820, when I found an estate record in Haywood County, North Carolina. Jerry Linn, a Fulbright descendant in Raleigh, North Carolina, found an estate file in the state archives. John had sold 6 parcels of land in 1816 (5 of these in September), and the North Carolina estate file was a settlement of debts still owed on this land. Did John die in North Carolina, or did he really make it to Missouri? Ed Stout thinks he did make the trip, and the land sales in 1816 suggest he was getting rid of land holdings to move elsewhere. We need more research on this branch before 1830 to shed more light on this legend! As to the story about the coffin and the crypt, draw your own conclusions! I think this is a wonderful legend about John, although there is no documentation for it other than word of mouth.

Several researchers on southeast Missouri Fulbrights often list all the other male Fulbrights appearing in the 1820s and 1830s as sons or grandsons of Jacob, Jr. However, John, with wife Barbara, appears around 1820 and died in 1824. His lengthy estate settlement and the settlement of his father's estate in North Carolina confirm he was from a different lineage than Jacob, Jr.

John is from the Andreas lineage, which has been well-researched by Roger and LaNeil. There is suggestive evidence that Andreas/Andrew was the father of William, whose son John came to Cape Girardeau Co., Missouri. A Burke County, North Carolina land grant, dated 1778, shows the name Andrew marked through and the name William written above it. This suggests William was an heir, possibly a son. This same land figures in a set of lawsuits filed by the heirs of William after he died in 1803. By the time the land was settled in 1830, son John had died, and all his children are listed on the land settlement, as well as in John Fulbright's estate settlement in Missouri and their grandmother Barbary's estate settlement in Arkansas. The children of William possible son of Andrew/Andreas) and Barbary include: Andrew who married Elizabeth Moser; Mary Magdelina who married George Sigmon; John who married Barbara Baker; Barbara who married David Killian; William; Jacob who married Susan Elizabeth who married Samuel Moser; Sarah who married John Woodring; and Catherine.

So what do we do with legends? First of all, I would suggest we not make more! When writing about family history, always cite or refer to the source for your information. Don't accept the legend as the end point--always search for the source. Where legends and facts disagree, try and understand the origin of the legend. Sometimes it may become clear why they were passed down as they were. Finally, for some aspects of family history, report them as legend, and enjoy them!

These legends help to make our ancestors real human beings, and provide insight into the way things were in the past.

I would like to conclude by thanking all those Fulbright genealogists, past and present, whose material I borrowed for this article. First and foremost, Ed Stout is the dean of Fulbright genealogists, and I consulted him with a number of questions in preparing this article. He is always willing to share and for that we are all grateful! Roger and La Neil Gephart have done some of the most thorough digging of any Fulbright researchers in uncovering the story of the Andreas line. They are also not stingy with their work, and have shared much with me and others in the family. I have learned a lot about the North Carolina Fulbrights from discussions with Judy Fulbright, the best of the researchers on the George Fulbright line. I owe my interest in this family and in genealogy to my uncle, Riley R. Eddleman. His files gave me a great base to build on when I inherited his work. David Fulbright should be thanked for drafting me into giving the banquet talk and for keeping us all together via e-mall and his editorship of the newsletter. Lorena Shell Eaker has benefitted us by acting as a gadfly for further digging by insisting on proof for the legends. Much of the information on the Links and other lines of Fulbright descendants comes from the work of Alice Spillman. Finally, we should thank all the other fine Fulbright researchers, past and present, for keeping the torch glowing!

I'll end with some wise words from The Eddleman-Fulbright Families about family history: No family history is ever complete. Each day sees new members being added and each new day will find new material being made available... I hope that someone will continue this search from where I have ended this story. Furthermore, I hope that someone will correct any mistakes I may have made so that eventually we will know the full story of the [Fulbrights] and their kin.