Open main menu
Open main menu
E.A. Fulton
(1836 - 1880)
Home State: Delaware
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
From New Castle County, DE, he was traveling in Europe at the start of the war. He returned home and enlisted for 3 months service in Company B, First Delaware Infantry on 22 May 1861. He enlisted again, and mustered as Private, Company K, 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry on 18 September 1861 in Philadelphia.
On the Campaign
He was wounded several times in action in the West Woods at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and later sent word home about his experience:
In the early part of the action a ball struck me in the thigh and afterward another one struck me in the left thigh, passing clear through the left thigh, and entering the right one, breaking the bone. It was at first thought that I would loose my life, But I think I shall only loose my right leg. A piece of shell also struck me in the left foot, while I was laying wounded on the field. I was also struck by a ball, on the mouth.
The rest of the War
He was treated at a field hospital on the Samuel Poffenberger farm near Sharpsburg, then at the Smoketown Hospital, and was discharged on a Surgeon's Certificate of disability on 1 May 1863.
After the War
He lived in Wilmington and died there in 1880 at his mother's home, of "exhaustion of the vital powers of the system" attributed to his Antietam wounds, age 44 years.
References & notes
Service information from his Compiled Military Service Records via the Historical Data Systems database, Bates,1 as Edward Fulten, and the Register.2 He's seen in some records in Companies I and N of the 72nd Infantry. Wound and hospital details from Nelson.3 The quote above is from a letter to his sister written for him by a hospital companion, found in Voices.4 Personal information from family genealogists and his obituaries in the Wilmington Daily Republican and Daily Gazette of 31 May 1880.
More on the Web
The hospital letter, along with his zouave jacket, photo, bible, and the bullet and a piece of bone removed from his leg, from the collection of Don Troiani, are now in the museum of the U.S. Center of Military History at Fort Belvoir, Va. Thanks to Mr Troiani for the pointer to Fulton via his Facebook page.
Birth
05/03/1836; Rockland, DE
Death
05/30/1880; Wilmington, DE; burial in Green Hill Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Wilmington, DE
1 Bates, Samuel Penniman, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65, Harrisburg: State of Pennsylvania, 1868-1871 [AotW citation 24029]
2 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Adjutant General's Office, Register of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, 16 volumes, Harrisburg [AotW citation 24030]
3 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, pp. 74, 217 [AotW citation 24031]
4 Woodhead, Henry, editor, Voices of the Civil War: Antietam, Alexandria (Va): Time-Life Books, 1996, pg. 146 [AotW citation 24032]