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Robert Fulton was born on the 14th November, 1765, on his father’s farm on Conowingo Creek in Little Britain Township, Pennsylvania. His father, Robert Fulton, Sr., was of Scottish descent. To his mother, Mary Smith, a woman of force and intelligence, young Robert owed his early education, and from her he derived the personal qualities that were to make him distinguished. His father was not successful as a farmer, so that when he died in 1768 he left his widow and five children in very straightened circumstances. Of the five children, three were girls, and of the boys, Robert was the elder.

This story is not concerned with the history of the Fulton family which has been thoroughly set forth by others, except to recall those salient steps in Robert’s career that led to his investigation of the possibilities of submarine navigation, and the designing of a boat to accomplish the end so far as the then state of the art of boat and engine construction would permit.

At school he did not excel in his studies which he neglected for sketching and mechanical experiments. When he was seventeen years of age, he set out to make his own career. As the village of Lancaster, where he was living with his mother, offered narrowly limited opportunities, he went to Philadelphia, then in many respects the most important city in the colonies. Not much is known of his early struggles, though apparently he devoted part of his time to art, because the City Directory in 1786, puts him down as a miniature painter, and some of his miniatures are in existence. Under the patronage of Benjamin Franklin, he made progress and earned enough money to purchase a farm for his mother.