Edgar Ross Fulton
EDGAR ROSS FULTON. Though educated for the law and for several years a successful attorney in Western Kansas, Edgar Ross Fulton for the past thirty-five years has given the best of his energies and capacity to banking. He is president of the First National Bank of Marysville, and is officially connected with several other banking enterprises of the state.
Mr. Fulton was born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvauia, on a farm, February 10, 1856. Life early presented itself to him as a matter of self achievement, with dependence only upon his own resources. After attending the common schools of his native county he went West, and from the results of his employment in several occupations found the means to enter and complete the course of the law school of the State University of Iowa, from which he was graduated with the class of 1877 and the degree LL. B.
Mr. Fulton went to Western Kansas in 1878, and was one of the pioneer attorneys of Hodgeman County. Upon the organization of that county he was appointed county attorney by Judge Peters, and in the fall of 1880 was elected to the office. He served three years altogether, and his future as a lawyer was exceedingly promising.
But he gave up the profession in 1882 and, coming to Marysville, engaged in banking. With Perry Hutchinson and August Hohn he organized the First National Bank and became its first cashier. In 1915 Mr. Fulton was made president. The First National Bank of Marysville has a capital of $75,000.00, Surplus and profits of $50,000.00, while its deposits aggregate about $800,000.00. It is one of the older and larger banks in Northern Kansas. Its home is the fine new building erected in 1901 on Broadway. The present officers are: E. R. Fulton, president August Hohn, vice president; H. A. Hohn, cashier, and E. A. Hohn, assistant cashier.
Mr. Fulton is also a director in the State Bank of Herkimer and the State Bank of Marietta, Kansas, and is a director in the Bankers Deposits, Guarantee and Surety Company of Topeka.
Besides his work as a banker Mr. Fulton is also known to the people of Kansas as a former member of the State Senate, representing Marshall County in that body from 1900 to 1908. Throughout the eight years he was chairman of the committee on banks and banking, and was also a member of the ways and means and other important committees. Politically Mr. Fulton is an old-line republican. For the past twenty years he has been a member of Marysville Board of Education, and was active in the plans and their carrying out as a result of which Marysville has a high school building, erected in 1915, one of the best in the entire state. He is an elder in the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Fulton was prominent in Masonry, and in 1907 was grand commander of the Knights Templar of Kansas.
In 1911 Mr. Fulton built a modern home on Eleventh Street in Marysville. He married at Marysville in 1885 Miss Jennie A. Schmidt, daughter of Frank and Jane A. Schmidt. Her father was one of the early bankers of Marysville. Her mother is still living in that city. Mrs. Fulton died in 1891, the mother of three children. In 1906 Mr. Fulton married Miss Ludowiene Schmidt, a sister of his first wife. His children, all by his first marriage, were: Edgar, who died at the age of four years; Ludowiene, wife of Charles U. Barrett, owner of the ice plant at Marysville; and Jennie S., who died in January, 1917, the wife of Lynn R. Broderick, publisher of the Advocate-Democrat of Marysville.
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; transcribed 1997.