FULKERSON FAMILY HISTORY
The Fulkersons and American Slavery
1. New York & New Jersey, 1630-1750
A word or two before we cover the first four generations of Volkersen/Fulkersons who migrated to the colonies in 1629. When I was first introduced to this part of our ancestry, I felt overwhelmed by the strange Dutch naming systems that were used for our first four ancestors: Dirck Volkertsen, Volkert Dircks, Dirck Volkersen and Volker Dircksen. I also felt daunted by how much further back in time that I was taken by a study of this part of our family. The furthest back I had gone previously was to 1720 with my study of the McPhersons who came over from Scotland at that time. It took me a while to fully comprehend that the Volkersens migrated to the colonies almost 100 years prior to the McPhersons. Fortunately, the history of this part of our family took place in a relatively small part of our country’s geography. Where the family started with Derek Volkertsen in the 1630s in New Amsterdam (Manhattan Island) is only fifty miles from where they ended up in Somerset County, New Jersey with Volker Dircksen in the 1750s.
Dirck Volkertsen (1595-1679)
The first of the Fulkersons to come to America was Dirck Volkertsen (Fulkerson is the Anglicized version of Volkertsen). He migrated from Norway and Holland to the “New World” in about 1629. He would have been 33 years old at the time. The Dutch had established a colony and trading post in what is known as New Amsterdam at the southernmost tip of Manhattan just prior to Dirck’s arrival. Historians estimate that at the time of his marriage to Christina Vigne in 1630, the population of the colony numbered 270 men, women & children. The English took possession of the colony in 1664. During the thirty years (1630-1658) that Dirck and Christina lived on Manhattan Island, he was actively engaged in acquiring parcels of land, in the construction of buildings and in boat building. As late as 1658, he was recorded as the “City Carpenter.” The preserved records of the New Amsterdam court concerning Direk show him to have been a colorful person of robust character and impulsive temperament. He and Christina had eight children, of which a son, Volkert, is our direct ancestor.
At some point around 1643, Dirck acquired several hundred acres of land at the west end of Long Island. Dirck’s stone farmhouse, built about 1645 on Long Island has remained habitable for 200 years. The architecture and care of the home gave evidence of the wealth of its owner. In 1666, Dirck was inevitably beginning to feel unable to continue manual labor as he grew older and made a contract with the older of his two sons, our ancestor, Volkert. Volkert would have Dirck’s land, stock and equipment for a period of five years for one-half of the grown products—maize, tobacco, rapeseed, etc. It is estimated that Dirck’s original Long Island holdings amounted to about 500 acres just before his death.
Volkert Dircks (1643-1700)
Dirck and Christina’s fifth child and oldest son was known as Volkert Dircks. The full name of Volkert is confusing because of the Dutch customs at the time in the giving of surnames. He was born and spent his early childhood in New Amsterdam and was in his early teens when the family moved to Long Island. They lived in a big stone house at Greenspoint, a mile across from Manhattan on the other side of the East River. In 1665 he married Annatje Philipse. They had ten children, of which Dirck was of our direct line. It appears from what historical account is available that this family was fairly conventional. Volkert was chiefly involved in the affairs of the family farm, a large portion of which he inherited. He was also known to participate in the public affairs of the local town of Bushwick. All of the family’s life was spent on the family estate on Long Island.
Dirck Volkersen (1667-1754)
The next generation of our direct line of Fulkersons is that of the second Dirck Volkersen. Soon after the death of his father in 1700, Dirck, his wife, Maria De Witt, three children and “two slaves” moved to Somerset County in the vicinity of New Brunswick, New Jersey where they would live for the rest of their lives. One historical source states that Dirck and his brother Philip bought a 300 acre tract of prime farmland where the “fertile Raritan River Valley beckoned with its affluents -- the Raritan and the Millstone Rivers.” Another source states that in 1701, he and three business partners purchased 1,200 acres in Somerset County. Probably, both sources are referring to the same event.
Maria was the mother to Dirck’s first three children, of which our ancestor, Volker Dircksen was the first born. Maria died in 1710 and Dirck married a second time to a Jennekin Schouwten. Little is known about her or their marriage other than two more children were born of this union. We do know that Dirck married a third time to Geertje Zynieltsen (1685-1769). They had one child who was born when Dirck was 57 years old.
Volkert Dircksen (1692-1754)
Born in Bushwick, King’s County, Long Island, New York. The Dutch influence in the naming of family members ended with him and the Anglicized version of Fulkerson began with his children. He was named for his paternal grandfather, Volker Dircks, and at time of his grandfather’s death in 1700, he moved with his parents to the Raritan-Millstone area in Somerset County, Province of East Jersey (near present-day Brunswick, New Jersey). In 1716 he married Dinah van Leeuwen.
Volkert was known at the time of his marriage to come from a family of excellent and substantial background. However, he turned out to be the proverbial black sheep of the family who was in hot financial water a lot of the time. There are numerous court records on Volkert as he was often in court. He did not have a criminal record, but he repeatedly did not live up to his civil obligations. In the Volkersen/Fulkerson line, both before and after Volkert, he seems to have been the only one who lacked a sense of responsibility for much of his adult life. I am reminded of the ravages of chronic alcoholism. Volkert was probably using family money to purchase 300 acres of riverside land for 300 pounds sterling on the east side of Millstone River in Middlesex County in 1719. There is considerable evidence of his father “bailing him out’ numerous times of financial difficulties.
Volkert and Dinah had ten children, the last of which was our direct ancestor, Abraham Fulkerson. It is not known when Dinah died. The story had been handed down that Volkert started out on the journey South when in 1754 his seven sons and two of his three daughters moved from New Jersey to Rowan County, North Carolina, and that Volkert was killed or died on the journey. Our ancestor, Abraham Fulkerson would have been 15 years old at the time.
Slavery in 1600s New York and New Jersey
The most common form of servitude in the early years of the colonies was that of the “bondsman” or indentured servant. This was an arrangement whereby a servant could be acquired by paying for his or her voyage to the New World for which the person had to pay back by seven years of servitude to his benefactor. Kenneth Stampp in his must-read book, “The Peculiar Institution” estimated that “probably more than half of the immigrants to the thirteen English colonies in North America came as bondsmen.” Indeed, my very own Scottish McPherson ancestor, Daniel, and his two brothers came to America as indentured servants in 1716. They were sent here in this way by the British after being captured during the Battle of Preston between the Scottish and British armies.
As early as 1619, the Dutch brought the first cargo of negros to Virginia. Landholders there received a small trickle of Negro servants during the next 50 years and worked them on tobacco plantations along with their infinitely more numerous white indentured servants. As early as the 1630s, Maryland’s planters began to use black labor. Not until the 1660s did Maryland and Virginia make the first important legal distinctions between white and Negro servants. During this decade various statutes provided that Negroes were to be slaves for life, that the child was to inherit the condition of the mother, and that Christian baptism did not change the slave’s status. As so well stated by Kenneth Stampp, “Thus the master class, for its own purposes, wrote chattel slavery, the caste system and color prejudice into American custom and law.” The growth of slavery in America from that time forward was phenomenal. Between then and the eve of the American Revolution, Virginia’s population was nearly evenly divided between Negroes and whites; in South Carolina the Negroes outnumbered the whites by two to one.
The Dutch West India Company imported eleven African slaves to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655. With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies (after Charleston, South Carolina), more than 42% of New York City households held slaves by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers. Others worked as artisans or in shipping and various trades in the city. Slaves were also used in farming on Long Island.
Slavery in New Jersey began in the early 17th century, when Dutch colonists trafficked African slaves for labor to develop the colony of New Netherland. After England took control of the colony in 1664, its colonists continued the importation of slaves from Africa. They also imported "seasoned" slaves from their colonies in the West Indies and enslaved Native Americans from the Carolinas.
Most Dutch and English immigrants entered the colony as indentured servants, who worked for a fixed number of years to repay their passage. As conditions in England improved and the number of indentured laborers declined, New Jersey's colonists trafficked more Africans for needed labor. To promote increasing the number of laborers and settlers in order to develop the colony, the colonial government awarded settlers headrights of 60 acres of land for each person transported to the colony. In 1704, after East Jersey and West Jersey unified, the Province of New Jersey passed a slave code prohibiting slaves and free blacks from owning property, further restricting African-Americans in the state.
Historical records show that Dirck Volkertsen owned two slaves in Somerset County, N.J. in 1698. One slave is also mentioned in his will (“a negro wench named Betty”) in 1754. There is no other reference of slave ownership for him or any other direct Volkertsen ancestors to our present knowledge. How much the family relied on slavery to develop and maintain the family’s “plantations” (Plantation was the word used in Dirck’s will for the land on which he lived.) is pure speculation, as there is no way of proving anything in this regard. However, the first Dirck is said to have had 400 to 500 acres of land north of Bushwick along the west side of Long Island and that his frontage of land along the East River was one mile long, The second Dirck is said to have shared 300 acres of prime farmland with his brother in New Jersey. We can say that given these large prime land holdings and the fact that Long Island was known for its fertile and flat tillable land, all four of the Volkertsens given above were likely to have relied on bondsman and slave labor for their Long Island and New Jersey plantation(s) in the last quarter of the 1600s and first half of the 1700s.
2. North Carolina, Tennessee & Virginia, 1750-1820
The Fulkerson family migrated to Rowan County, North Carolina in 1754. Volkert’s seven sons and two of his three daughters all traveled together. Volkert was killed or died on the journey. Our ancestor, Abraham Fulkerson (1740-1821) would have been 15 years old at the time. Using the inheritance of their grandfather, Dirck Volkersen (1667-1754), each of the Fulkerson children established themselves with significant land holdings in the Rowan and Surrey Counties of North Carolina. In about 1770, Abraham and his older brother, James, moved their families to the "Overmountain" region of southwest Virginia, with Abraham settling in what is now Scott County and James in adjacent Washington County (they lived less than 30 miles from each other).
Abraham married Sarah Gibson in Rowan Co., North Carolina, on 2 July 1766. They had nine children. Both Abraham and his brother, James, fought in the Revolutionary War in the Battle of King's Mountain, North Carolina in October, 1780. The battle was between 900 Patriots and 1,100 Loyalists. The Patriots decisively won with 26 Patriots and 290 Loyalists killed.
After the war Abraham built the family home in Scott County, Virginia and it still stands today. His brother, James, lived nearby and they were among the first settlers there. James later moved his family to the Abingdon vicinity in the adjacent Washington County. There are claims by some family historians that his or a son’s original home still stands. Abraham was one of the first county commissioners of Scott County. There is historical evidence that during the period of 1782 to 1812 Abraham acquired an estate of at least 1,792 acres. From tax records of 1802 it appears that he also owned five tracts of land in what was then Lee County totaling another 587 acres along the Clinch River. He sold some of his land, but at the time of his death he owned 1000 acres. In 1818 a Scott County property list shows him with three slaves and four horses. The 1820 U.S. Census for Scott, Virginia shows Abraham and Sarah as having five slaves, probably a family: one female 45 and over, one male 26 thru 44, one female 14 thru 25, two females under 14. Abraham’s brother, James, was also a slaveholder. The Washington County personal property tax list for 1782 showed James as owning “22 horses, 44 head of cattle and seven slaves - Peg, Ellen, Bob, Sam, Zelph, Nanie and Jude.” An inventory in 1799 of Captain James Fulkerson’s estate shows him with “16 negroes ranging in value from 20 to 90 pounds each”. Both Abraham and Sarah are buried on the family farm on Dowell Gap Road in Hiltons, Scott County, VA. There are a total of 10 burial stones, none of which are legible.
James Abraham Fulkerson (1768-1847) was the third-born child of Abraham and Sarah. He married Elizabeth McMillan in 1791 and they had nine children of which our ancestor, James Monroe Fulkerson was the fifth child. The family lived in Washington & Lee Counties, VA until moving to Campbell County, Tennessee in 1807. They lived there for about eight years before moving to Missouri in 1815.
Slavery in the late 1700s in North Carolina, Virginia & Tennessee
Ten years after the Fulkerson family arrived and just prior to statehood, there were 41,000 enslaved African-Americans in the Province of North Carolina in 1767. It is estimated that the slave population was one-quarter the total population at that time. The Lord Proprietors encouraged importing of slaves to the Province of North Carolina by instituting a headright system that gave settlers acreage for the number of slaves that they brought to the province. The geography was a factor that slowed the importation of slaves. Settlers imported slaves from Virginia or South Carolina because of the poor harbors and treacherous coastline. The large tobacco plantations were in the eastern part of the state where the land was flat and produce could be more easily transported to the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the farming done in the western part of the state was by small family farms, many of whom did own slaves but in much smaller numbers. The number of slaves in the western North Carolina counties (Davidson, Washington, Tennessee, Sullivan) that became part of Tennessee in 1796 had relatively few slaves.
Tobacco was the key export of the Virginia colony in the seventeenth century. Slave breeding and trading gradually became more lucrative than exporting tobacco during the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century. Black human beings were the most lucrative and profitable export from Virginia, and black women were bred to increase the number of enslaved people for the slave trade. As in the case of North Carolina, the large plantations were in the eastern part of the state; in the west most farming was done on a small scale.
During the time that the Fulkersons lived in Campbell County, Tennessee, slaves made up 17% of the total population of 261,00 persons. Public sentiment supporting the abolition of slavery swelled in the first three decades of the 1800s. An 1826 law prohibited the bringing slaves into the state for purposes of sale, rather than the direct use of their labor. Freedmen were required without fail to have their emancipation records with them at any time and place in order to prove their freedom. In 1831, however, the state government mandated that emancipated slaves immediately depart the state and prohibited the migration of free Blacks to Tennessee. The state government backed slavery in the 1834 constitution, required newly emancipated Blacks to leave the state, and encouraged European immigration. The vast majority of slaveholders held legal title over just one or two persons, with the largest holding being ten or eleven slaves.
3. Missouri 1815-1865
A Cole County, Missouri history states that a “James Miller and his three sons and James Fulkerson and his three sons were members of a group of the earliest settlers from Tennessee in 1815.” The most likely mode of travel from Tennessee would have been by flatboat down the Tennessee River, a very short stretch of the Ohio River, then upstream on the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. It seems likely that the three oldest sons of James Fulkerson (William, Abraham H. and James Monroe) were those named in the historical account. However, only the three youngest sons (James Monroe, Frederick & John) have historical records showing that they were actually there. At the time, James F. would have been 47, his wife Elizabeth, 43, William M., 22, Abraham H. 17, James Monroe, 12, Frederick, 7, John L. 1. It makes sense to me that the whole family traveled from Tennessee to Cole County, Missouri in 1815 and that the two older brothers only stayed for a few years until the family was safely established. In 1815 James Miller, Jr. would have been 69, His 2nd wife, Elizabeth Kincaid 37, and his three oldest sons: James, 30, Andrew, 29 & Thomas, 23. James, Andrew & Thomas who were his sons from his first marriage are the likely persons named in the history of Cole County. Richard N. Miller who later married James Monroe Fulkerson's sister, was the only son from James Miller's second marriage, and was only 17 at the time of the move.
The earliest settlement made within Cole Co. was that by the “Tennessee colony” in 1815-1816 at the mouth of the Moniteau Creek. The Moniteau empties into the Missouri River close to present day Sandy Hook (about 15 miles upstream from the Missouri capital, Jefferson City). Information provided about a "Certified Tract Book made by the United States Land Office, at Boonville, Missouri" included the following original entry: "The west half of the southeast quarter of Section 27, Township 45, Range 13, containing 80 acres, was entered January 17, 1825 by James (Abraham) Fulkerson. Certificate No. 1533." Succeeding entries tell us that James Fulkerson sold 30 acres to his son Frederick M. Fulkerson for $50.00 on 28 Jan 1833, and that Frederick Moore Fulkerson and Sarah, his wife, sold the 30 acres to their son-in-law William T. Hines, who would die on the Oregon Trail in 1847. James Abraham F.’s wife, Elizabeth, died on February 22, 1832. Her gravestone still stands on a private farm in Cole Co., MO. James Abraham F. died on December 16, 1847 in the home of his son, Frederick F. James, his brother, Richard, and Richard's son James Henry F. are all buried in a row in Goshen Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, Boone Co., MO.
James Monroe Fulkerson was twelve years old at the time of the family’s move to Missouri. At age 22 he owned his first piece of property in section 37 of Cole County in 1824. Richard and his brother, Andrew Miller had land nearby in section 33. James Monroe F.’s brother, Frederick Moore F. is also shown as owning land close by during the same period. Just prior to this time, Richard Miller married James Monroe F.’s sister, Nancy Leeper Fulkerson, in 1821. Conversely, James Monroe F. married Richard Miller’s sister, Mary Ramsey Miller in 1823. The bond between the two families continued over the next 25-30 years, including traveling together on the Oregon Trail and years after in Oregon.
James Monroe F. was licensed to keep a ferry at Moniteau Creek in Cole County in 1831. In 1834 he was a member of a group of Baptists who gathered in Calloway County to discuss the state of the Baptist religion in Missouri. He is mentioned as deacon of the first Protestant Church in Cole County, the Sardis Baptist Church, where he was baptized. Sometime around 1835, he moved his family to Platte County (northwest of present-day Kansas City), where he was a Justice of the Peace and where he and his wife were founders of the Bear Creek Missionary Baptist Church. James and Mary’s youngest daughter, Hannah, was born there. In 1844 the family moved 40-80 miles further north to Nodaway County. James Curl, Richard Miller and James Fulkerson are listed as settlers of that county in 1844. James was a County Judge of Nodaway County (probably Maryville, the county seat) in 1845. He also served in the Missouri state legislature and was a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention in 1845-46. His son-in-law, James Ambrose Cain was also lived in Nodaway County as a young, single man. In 1845 he married James Monroe Fulkerson and Mary Ramsey Miller’s second born, Sarah Amanda Fulkerson. James and Sarah lived there for the next 13 years, during which he served in the same judgeship as his father-in-law in 1856.
According to a History of Nodaway County, the Fulkerson, Miller & Curl families farmed in a section of Nodaway County known as “Hickory Grove which was located one mile south and two miles west of Skidmore. It lies about midway on Hickory Creek which flows into the Nodaway River”. The History states that James Curl came to Nodaway County in 1842 and the Millers and Fulkersons in 1844. The History also states James Curl’s brother, Bartlett Curl, was the sheriff of the county and that “Skidmore is situated in the fertile valley of the Nodaway River and is surrounded by one of the finest and most beautiful sections of land in the state.”
In the spring of 1847, the Fulkersons, Millers, Curls and many of their relatives became part of an Oregon-bound party composed primarily of members of the Old Florence Baptist Church located near Jefferson City. Some three hundred congregation members joined a wagon train captained by James Curl. The 120-wagon company soon broke into four groups. The group calling itself "The Plains Baptist Church" was led by “Deacon Fulkerson and Reverend Richard Miller”.
In spite of the fact that James Monroe Fulkerson’s grandfather, Abraham, owned 5-6 slaves in Virginia in 1818-20, at no time in the historical record is there an indication of slave ownership by either James Monroe F. or his brother-in-law, Richard Miller. While there is no way of knowing, I like to think that this was because of their religious convictions at the time. We do know that during the late 1830s and early 1840s, the slavery question began to affect the religious bodies of the country. The Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists were known in Missouri as abolitionists.
However, during this time, other Fulkersons owned slaves in Missouri. James Monroe F.’s uncle, Richard Fulkerson (1780-1852) of Boone County, immediately adjacent to Cole County, is shown as having three slaves in 1830, six slaves in 1840 and fourteen slaves in 1850. Another family member, a brother of James Monroe F., Frederick Moore Fulkerson (1808-1880), also owned slaves. In the 1840 census, Frederick is shown as having three slaves in Boone County. Also, the 1850 U.S. slave schedule shows him owning a 20-year-old man and 15-year-old girl. The family story is that he decided slavery was wrong and he freed his slaves sometime before the Civil War (no slaves are listed for him in the 1860 census.) A son, James Ridgeway Fulkerson, was a Captain in the Union Army (45th and 50th Missouri Infantry).
The 1840 U.S. Census of Rocky Fork, Boone County, Missouri shows an Abram Fulkerson as owing one slave. However, the age given in the census does not match up to any of the Fulkersons known at this time to us (the oldest adult male was shown as 30-39; James Abraham F. would have been 62 at the time.) As of the time of this research, I have not been able to identify Abram. He is certain to be a close relative of the James Abraham Fulkerson family; how I don’t know as of yet.
Boone County, immediately north of Cole County and on the north side of the Missouri River, was home to several Fulkersons. Richard Fulkerson, brother to James Abraham Fulkerson, lived there from 1816 to his death in 1852. Frederick Moore F., the other Fulkerson that owned slaves, shows up in the 1840 and 1850 U.S. census there. James Abraham F. died there in 1847. Boone County along with a stretch of other Missouri counties (especially, Howard, Calloway & Boone) along the Missouri River were known by historians as “Little Dixie” because of the large number of plantations there. The land there was fertile, flat and close to river transportation. Wealthy planters from Kentucky and Tennessee moved into the Little Dixie region where they bought up large tracts of fertile land and brought in slaves to do the work of growing hemp and tobacco.
Slavery in the Early to Mid-1800s in Missouri
The rest of the state was made up of small slaveholdings. The social habits were those of the farm and not of the plantation. The white owner, with his sons, labored in the same fields with the negroes both old and young. The mistress guided the industries in the house in both colors. Hemp was the great Missouri farm staple, although its culture was mostly restricted to the Missouri River counties. The other staple crops of Missouri were tobacco and cotton.
Missouri laws regarding slavery, like many other slave states, treated the enslaved as property that could be bought and sold. Although the Missouri Constitution of 1820 required that the legislature enact laws to ensure humane treatment of the enslaved, and in 1825 the legislature adopted a slave code governing treatment, in practice most of the enslaved had no protection under the law. A black person could not give testimony against a white. Brandings, beatings, rape, and family separation were not uncommon physical abuses, but the slave system also created mental and intellectual barriers that were equally abusive. Later laws relating to slavery included an 1847 law prohibiting teaching reading or writing to the enslaved and banning free Blacks from entering the state. Other legal restrictions included that the enslaved could not own property without permission from an owner, they could not buy or sell liquor, and they could not marry legally. The enslaved were also prohibited from serving as witnesses against whites, and they were prohibited from holding assemblies, including church services, without permission and without a white person in attendance. The Missouri legislature also adopted several laws to combat rising abolitionist and rebellious tendencies: in 1837, exciting slaves to rebellion was made punishable by fine and punishment. Also in 1837, township patrols were established to monitor slave activities. In 1843, illegally transporting a slave from the state was made a class of grand larceny.
Given all of the above, how are we to think of our Missouri ancestors in relation to slavery? Missouri was considered a “slave state’ up to the end of the civil war. Even though there were strong abolitionist feelings among many Missouri citizens, the majority considered slavery as legal and just. Prior to the civil war, Missouri was home to some of the most divisive national political issues on the subject of slavery. The conflict between Kansas Territory and Missouri leading to the widely known name for the conflict of “Bleeding Kansas” took place largely in the middle of the 1850s. The Dred Scott case began in the mid-1840s and ended ten years later also in Missouri. With the exception of the plantations bordering the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, the incidence of slavery in Missouri (18% in 1830) was relatively low compared to the Deep South. As was noted earlier in this paper, slave ownership in the state was largely on the part of small farms where the number of slaves were in the 3-5 range.
The Fulkerson and Miller families and extended kin in Missouri may have been divided on the issue of the abolition of slavery as was the rest of the state. The Baptists were particularly riven by the issue. The “Southern Baptist Convention" was organized in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia by Baptists in the southern United States split over the issue of slavery, with Southern Baptists strongly opposed to its abolition. As I mentioned in an earlier part of the paper, I like to think that James Monroe Fulkerson and Richard Miller were opposed to owning slaves if not outright abolitionists. As we know from American history, the issue pitted brother against brother (particularly in the border states such as Missouri) in the coming civil war. There could have been considerable disagreement among the Fulkerson and Miller extended families on this issue.
As slavery was not allowed in the Oregon Territory (even free blacks were discouraged by territorial law to move there), only a very few of the families who took the Oregon Trail had slaves at the time. I suspect that most families sold their slaves before embarking on the journey to Oregon. The practical issue of slavery and even contact with African Americans was left behind in “the states” and was for many years practically non-existent in Oregon. White settlers created a white society there which gradually disenfranchised the Native Americans who preceded them and discouraged any free Black Americans from coming to Oregon.
