Wm Stroup Fultz

FULTZ, STROUP, VALET, TOHM

Posted By: Deborah Barker (email)
Date: 9/5/2009 at 14:58:42

William Stroup Fultz, is a well known horticulturist of Muscatine county, living on section 23, Bloomington township, where he has a splendidly developed tract of land devoted to the raising of fruits of all knids. Success has followed him as the years have passed by because he has labored persistently and intelligently. He was born in Mifflin county, Pennsylvania, February 21, 1836, and was the fourth in order of birth in a family of fourteen children, whose parents were William and Sophia ( Stroup ) Fultz, likewise natives of the keystone state, the former born in Center county, September 20, 1811, and the later in Mifflin county, July 11, 1814. The paternal grandfather, Martin Fultz, was a native of Germany and was the eldest and the only son of a large family until he was twenty-one years of age, when the second son was born. About the time he attained his majority Martin Fultz came to America as a " stowaway." He landed at Baltimore and in order to pay his passage the captain of the ship sold him to a Quaker for three years. He had been in that service for a year when the Revolutionary war broke out and he entered the army as a substitute for his master. At he close of his term of service he was at Germantown, Pennsylvania, where he remained and later was married there. His wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Fultz, was born in Londonderry, Ireland, of Scotch parentage, and came to Pennsylvania at the age of seven years.
Their family numbered twelve children, including William Fultz, who was engaged in the forwarding and commission business in Pennsylvania and owned a line of boats on the Pennsylvania canal. After his removal to the west he came with his family to Iowa, settling in Muscatine county, where he operated a sawmill and also engaged in farming on Sugar Creek. In early manhood he had wedded Sophia Stroup, who was af German descent in the paternal line and an English descent in the maternal line. The Stroups, however, have been residents of America for about two hundred and fifty years. The death of William Fultz occurred December 17, 1879, and his wife, surviving him for about eight years, passed away in July, 1887. Nine of their eleven children are now living. An older brother of our subject, Thomas E. Fultz, served in the Ninth Iowa Infantry during the Civil war and died in California, January 1, 1897.
William S. Fultz, of this review was only two years of age when his parents removed to what was then Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania, but is now Blair county. He was fourteen years of age when, in the spring of 1850, the family came to Muscatine Iowa, arriving here on the 15th of April. From Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to Johnstown, that state, they had traveled over the old Portage Railroad, the cars being pulled up the mountains by ropes operated by a stationary engine and endless cables being then used to let them down. From Johnstown the family proceeded by canal boat to Pittsburg and by steamboat to Muscatine. The family home was established a mile north of Moscow on Sugar creek and the father there built a sawmill, making his home upon that place until his death. William S. Fultz aided his father in the operation of the mill and the work of the home place until 1861.
Aroused by a spirit of patriotism, he enlisted on the 19th of September, 1861, as a member of Company D, Eleventh Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and was mustered in at Davenport on the 3d of October. He served with that command until the close of the war and veteranized on the 1st of January, 1864, at Vicksburg, Mississippi. He was never absent from the company or regiment during the entire service and took part in all of the engagements in which the Eleventh Iowa Infantry participated. His army life covered the usual experiences and hardships which are meted out to the soldier. He was with Sherman in his campaigns, took part in the grand review in Washington, where the victorious army marched through the streets of the capital amid the cheers of the multitudes that thronged the line of march, and was mustered out at Louisville Kentucky, July 14, 1865.
With a most creditable military record Mr. Fultz returned to Moscow and resumed farming. In the spring of 1872 he came to his present place, a farm of eighty acres, three-fourths of a mile north of the corporation limits of Muscatine on section 23, Bloomington township. He has since devoted his attention to horticultural pursuits. All kinds of fruit are here grown and the business is most successfully and capably conducted. Mr. Fultz has made a study of the best methods of cultivating the different kinds of fruit, of the nature of the soil required and the climatic conditions and his wide knowledge is manifest in the splended results which follow his labors.
On the 23d of January. 1867, Mr. Fultz was married to Miss Martha Valet, who was born in Ohio, September 12, 1840, and was brought to Iowa in 1842 by her parents, Jacob and Mary Valet, both of whom were natives of Germany but were married in Philadelhpia. After coming to Iowa they spent two years in Cedar county and then removed to this county, both the mother and father spending their last days in Muscatine. They had five children who reached mature years, The home of Mr. and Mrs. Fultz has been blessed with seven children, those living being : Mary Martha, now the wife of William Tohm, of Muscatine ; George William, a resident of Guthrie, Oklahoma ; Francis Levi, who is operating the home farm ; Theodore Noah, who lives at home but is married and follows the carpenter's trade ; and John Edmond, a carpenter of Muscatine. Mr. and Mrs. Fultz lost two children, Charles henry and William Henry, both of whom died in infancy.
In his political views Mr. Fultz is a republican and was an active worker in party ranks for twenty years. He served as justice of the peace for two terms, township trustee for three terms, and assessor for three terms. He has also acted as road supervisor and school director, filling the latter position at intervals for about thirty years. In public office he has ever been found loyal to the trusts reposed in him, discharging his duties with promptness and fidelity. For one year he served as chairman of the county central committee of the republican party. Fraternally he is connected with Shelby Norman Post, No. 231, G. A. R., of Muscatine. He became a member of an organization known as the First Settlers of Muscatine County but now called the Old Settlers Society and has served as its president and secretary. For sixty years he has lived in this county and has , therefore, been a witness of the greater part of its progress, development, and improvement. He has always rejoiced in what has been accomplished here and as the years have passed has taken an active and helpful part in promoting the best interests of this section of the state. His life has been well spent and in matters of citizenship he is as true and loyal to his country as when he followed the old flag on southern battlefields.
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume II, Biographical, 1911, page 370