The Fulkerson Family Pages
MONROE D. FULKERSON (9th generation)
b. 24 Aug 1844 d. 6 December 1923
Monroe married Lucinda Harris (1857-1904), daughter of Thomas Harris. They homesteaded 200 acres north of Victor, Montana.
Their 9 children were: HARLAN (1874), George (1876), Thomas (1877), Alice (1880), Ellen Jane (1883), Maud (1885), Ruby (1887), Raymond (1889), Nina (b. 1892-d. 1895).
HARLAN MONROE FULKERSON (10th generation)
b. 19 Jun 1874 d. 8 Dec 1927
Harlan was born 19 Jun 1874 at Victor, MT. He married Bertha Johnson (1874-1924, born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota) in 1894. He was a farmer and for a time was a Deputy Sheriff in Ravalli County. In 1897 he was living at Kalispell, MT, and in 1899 at Grantsdale, MT. In 1904 he was living in Idaho, but returned to Victor upon his mother's death and took over operation of his father's ranch. By the summer of 1909 he had moved to Riverside, Okanogan County, Washington. Bertha died in 1924. He died at Lake Chelan, WA in 1927. Both are buried at the Cowlitz View Memorial Gardens in Kelso, WA. Their 6 children were: Carl (1895-1897), FRANKLIN MONROE (1897-1980), Leo Marvin (1899-1979), Joyce Helen (1902-1957), Mildred Marguerite (1904-1981), Alvin Harlan (1909-1976).
FRANKLIN MONROE FULKERSON (11th generation)
b. 10 Apr 1897 d. 30 Jun 1980
Frank grew up in Montana and Washington State. He joined the Canadian Army at Lethbridge, Alberta, in September 1916, and embarked from Halifax on a ship to Europe just three weeks later. After a while in France the conditions got pretty bad. The soldiers were often forced to forage for food, eat rats, etc. In September 1917 the Americans had entered the war and were finally beginning to appear on the French battlefields. Frank deserted the Canadian Army and joined the Americans by donning the uniform of a dead American. After a while his scheme was uncovered. The American Army jailed him in the stockade, but because he was a US citizen they didn't want to turn him over to the Canadians. After about a month, they decided to just send him home to Montana. (His US draft registration card, stamped at Philipsburg, MT, was dated 5 Jun 1918.) He was welcomed home with a grand parade, and married Ethel _____ on 3 Sep 1918, before the war's end.
Ethel was born on 12 Sep 1903, so she was 9 days short of being 15 years old when she married. Her ancestors emigrated from Shepton Mallet, Somerset County, England, in 1770. They were early settlers in southwest Virginia and Kentucky. Ethel's grandfather moved west from Tennessee to California in 1871. Her father was born in a covered wagon at Grass Valley, California.
Frank worked as a gold miner, mine guard, bootlegger (on the Columbia River), farmer and in various other occupations. While working in the mines he found a bear cub and took it home. It became the family pet - and Frank's drinking companion at the local tavern. That lasted about two weeks, until the forest rangers got wind of what was going on. They also had two deer, a pig and a chipmunk for pets. His children, including my father, rode horses and even skied to school. (My father left this idyllic paradise, after his senior class of eleven students graduated, and went to sea on the USS Spokane.) Frank's life was always unorthodox and seldom boring. When he replaced the window frames on his house, he mounted the new ones upside down, with the sills at the top.
Frank and Ethel had four children. They divorced in the 1940's. By a second wife, Melba Jean_____, he had three more children, the last when he was 57 years old. When they were mostly grown, he headed off for Alaska by himself. He spent his last years in an Idaho retirement home where he was an active gardener.
