The Family Circle

I enjoy reading books but almost always they are non-fiction, historical choices. I've tried to read all the new books that come out about early presidents and events in the US before 1900.


One of the major topics of course in those books was what happened in the 1860s. I've tried to read books on both sides and about the men who led both armies. I recently read a new one about Ulysses S. Grant and just finished one on William Sherman. In reading about Grant I remembered a story about his early romances and then came across a newspaper article that tied it to the Fulford family.


Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio but the next year his family moved to Georgetown, Ohio. As a teenager there he met and fell in love with Mary Ann King. She had been born on February 4, 1824 in Georgetown to Victor and Mary Ann Mickle King.


Grant left home at age 17 to enroll in the U.S. Military Academy but kept up a correspondence with Mary King for many years. He continued to write her even after he became romantically involved with his future wife Julia Dent, who he became engaged in 1844.


While he was serving in the Mexican War in 1846 he drew a painting and sent it to Mary Ann King. The painting is mentioned in the newspaper article below from the January 9, 1890 edition of the Asheville Democrat.

The article said Mary King married a man named Fulford and moved to California. I decided to track her down and was able to locate her in Louisiana. At this point I haven't figured out how her husband is related to my Fulford family but would assume he is, considering where he was from.

John Davidson Fulford was born in Norfolk, Virginia on January 28, 1818. He married Mary King while she was still in Ohio and they moved to Louisiana in the 1850s.

John Fulford became a Carriage Maker and they had at least five children. John died on October 13, 1870 and is buried in the St. John's Cemetery in Thibodaux, Louisiana. I found him on census records but haven't been able to identify his parents.

I did locate his brother, James W. Fulford, who was living with John and Mary on the 1860 census in Louisiana but moved to North Carolina when the war broke out and enlisted in the Confederate Army. James W. Fulford was born in 1830 in Norfolk, Virginia and died on July 25, 1881 in Columbia, North Carolina. This article from the July 26, 1881 Weekly Economist tells of his death.

Mary Ann King Fulford died in 1903, still living in Thibodaux, Louisiana and is buried next to her husband in the St. John's Cemetery. Although she was well known in the area, I can't find any newspaper articles that mentioned her relationship to Grant, who was not very popular in Louisiana, so I guess she chose to take that secret with her to St. John's.