| The next Fulkerson reunion will be July 24-27, 2025, at the Fulkerson Farms in Glenora, New York. email: reunion@fulkersonwinery.com Check back for more information. |
This site is under construction with frequent updates, corrections, and additions on all pages. Check often for changes if you have used any information from this site.
THE FULKERSON FAMILY in America has a beginning point: 1630, in the riotous Dutch settlement on Manhattan Island, with the marriage of Dirck Volckertszen the Noorman (“the Norwegian”) and Christina Vigne. A French Walloon, she and her family sailed from Holland in 1624 to help establish the Dutch West India Company outpost at New Amsterdam (New York). As you might already suspect, the Fulkersons and Vignes occasionally contributed to the wild state of affairs in the new Dutch colony.
DIRCK AND HIS FAMILY twice survived the devastation of their Manhattan colony in Indian wars instigated by his brother-in-law. He farmed where Wall Street now stands, built houses where Maiden Lane now runs, stabbed at least one cheating gambler, served as the city carpenter and established one of the first farms in Brooklyn (1638). His grandchildren sold the Brooklyn farm after 1700 and went to the newly-opened interior of New Jersey. They and many other former New Amsterdammers settled in Somerset County…which became George Washington‘s Sherwood Forest during the Revolution and was the scene of many battles and skirmishes with the British Redcoats. More than a dozen Fulkersons fought for our independence.
MANY FULKERSON FAMILIES left New Jersey between 1750 and 1800 to become early settlers on the western frontiers of our original Thirteen Colonies. They went to Virginia and the Carolinas where several were killed by Indians, moved west to Kentucky and Pennsylvania and went north to upstate New York. Succeeding waves of migration brought branches of the Fulkerson family to Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri. Some families followed in the footsteps of Daniel Boone, and some actually walked alongside him. All of those Fulkersons were American pioneers, opening new lands across the continent.
THROUGHOUT the Colonial Days , the American Revolution, the Oregon Trail migration, the Civil War and the settling of the West, the Fulkersons led lives intertwined with American history. For example, more than 200 Fulkersons fought for or against slavery during the Civil War, and at least 11 former slaves named Fulkerson joined the Union Army. This site focuses on presenting all of those stories, bringing the past to life and hopefully proving that “genealogy is more than the begats.”
FULKERSON BRANCHES have been scattering across America for 300 years. Some branches lost contact with the rest of the family and eventually lost touch with their origins. Therefore, another main emphasis of the site is to assist those Unattached Branches and help them trace their way back to the New Amsterdam settlement.
AIDING OUR EFFORT to gather and share information, we have a Cousins E-Mail Page with more than 100 cousins – identified by the states they’re researching – willing to correspond and share information. It’s been there since the Spring of 1997. And so have some of the cousins.
BECAUSE the pursuit of “genealogy” might otherwise turn us into cave-dwelling zombies, we’ve got a few pages that veer off a little bit….or a lot. These include the Tidbits, the Current Special, and of course, Buy An Ancestor Online.
This site was initially created and maintained by the tireless Efforts of Bob Fulkerson who passed away in 2012. This site is maintained in his memory. While we could never duplicate the painstaking hours of devotion he poured into this site, we hope to honor his work by preserving and adding to his research.