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FULTON MANSION
scrip for approximately 1,280 acres. (Instead of money, the Republic paid their soldiers with warrants and land scrip, or IOUs.)
At the end of his enlistment term in May 1837, George traveled to Houston, where he worked as a draftsman in the General Land Office.
There in the Republic’s capital city, he befriended Henry Smith, who had been the provisional governor of Texas and was then the Secretary of the Treasury under Sam Houston. Needing money, George approached Henry to gain payment for his warrants. Henry Smith was unable to grant payment. Instead, he gave George, a virtual stranger, a personal loan. As George fondly remembered their first meeting:
I thanked him cordially and handed him my warrants which he pushed away, saying: “I don’t want those things!” Much surprised, I remarked: “I am a stranger to you sir, and you certainly want security of some kind.” “Well sir,” he replied, “I am going to take your face.” And he did.
(Brown, John Henry, 1887, 384)
Henry Smith and George Fulton became fast friends and began to consider mutually advantageous business ventures. George traveled along the south coast surveying and locating land claims, including his own land grant in San Patricio County. Henry directed his attention to the Live Oak Peninsula where he believed the old Mexican empresario agreements were hindering land development. Henry and George planned a city on a portion of their newly acquired Live Oak Peninsula property. Incorporated in 1839, the new town of Aransas City prospered initially, and George served as the district customs collector.
In 1840, George moved to the Brazoria area to Henry Smith’s plantation. According to family tradition, George taught school for Henry’s children. Seventeen-year-old Harriet Gillette Smith, Henry Smith’s oldest daughter, was one of George’s pupils. Many years later Harriet remembered teasing her teacher:
. . . that memorable morning (many years ago when you and I were very young) in the little school room in our dear old home on the Brazos. Your head ached and you had just bathed it and you looked so badly and a little vixen treated [you] just as meanly as I was going to treat [you] in my dream. But you didn’t put your arm around me and kiss me then. . . . (Fulton [George W. and James] Papers, 1836–1916)
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