Street Address
1932 Fulton Highway
Quarryville, PA 17566
Mailing Address
P.O. BOX 33
Quarryville, PA 17566
phone: 717-548-2679
Hours
Memorial Day to Labor Day
Guided tours available
Saturday11 AM - 4 PM
Sunday1 PM - 4 PM
Admissions
$5.00
Staff
Stanley White, President
phone: 717-548-2679
Marsha Stiles, Secretary

Description

Inventor and artist Robert Fulton was born in this old stone and wood farmhouse on November 14, 1765 in southern Lancaster County. The birthplace is open for tours during the summer. Historical garden is annexed.

Owned by the State of Pennsylvania and managed by the Southern Lancaster County Historical Society, PO Box 33, Quarryville, PA 17566.

History

Robert Fulton was born on November 14, 1765, in Little Britain, Pa. After losing their farm in 1772, the family moved to nearby Lancaster, where Fulton's father worked as a tailor. In his mid-teens, Robert worked as an apprentice jeweler in Philadelphia painting miniatures (small portraits for brooches and lockets). There, too, he was exposed to the latest scientific thinking, for the city was then the nation's center of science and invention. In the spring of 1787, he traveled to England to study painting, but quickly grew weary of art. Ambitious, clever, and intelligent, he became fascinated with engineering.