Posted: May 12, 2026 4:28 pm
John Fulton was the General Mining Engineer of Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown in the late 1800s. Heritage Johnstown houses six unpublished memoirs by John Fulton about his life, work, and retirement. The typewritten memoirs are annotated, and contain pictures, maps, and keepsakes from his life and travels. Fulton even made them into a scrapbook in some instances.
A volunteer with Heritage Johnstown scanned them, and students in Dr. Paul Newman’s Public History class at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown transcribed the text of three of the six memoirs. Richland High School student Saffron Barrett-Ross spent two months going through the text to review the UPJ students’ work and ensure consistency, and prepare the document for publication. The result of this work is now online here and in the Archives & Collections section of this website. Below are Saffron’s comments about the contents of these first three memoirs, and a link so you can read them for yourself!
John Fulton, at first glance, seems to have been a fairly typical man. Born in County Tyrone, Ireland in 1826, he was the eldest of seven Fulton children. In 1848, the family of nine immigrated to the United States. Fulton would eventually settle in Johnstown, where he would work as a mining engineer for the Cambria Iron Company. Fulton passed away in 1916 and is buried in Grandview Cemetery, in his family plot. In December 1914, he wrote his memoirs, three volumes of which are transcribed. As a perusal of these memoirs will reveal, Fulton was much more than what met the eye. Just a few of the topics that Fulton addresses in his writing are:
Of course, not all of Fulton’s writings are humorous. Although he was not personally in Johnstown when the floodwaters of 1889 decimated much of Johnstown, his family was. In his memoirs, he details his experience of walking from Bolivar, Pennsylvania back to Johnstown, including a description of the sights he saw as he made his way upriver. Fulton walked 20 miles before reaching Johnstown, where he learned that no one in his family had been seriously harmed by the flood. In his own words, when he heard this, “The reaction from despair to hope was so violent that I was unable to speak.” (Imagine what that moment must have been like!) He, like many other residents of Johnstown, would help to clean up, rebuild, and continue living in Johnstown for many more years to come.
From humorous anecdotes to heart-wrenching tales, John Fulton’s memoirs contain a wealth of knowledge about the life of a man who lived and died in a world very different from today’s. Read his memoirs and learn for yourself about the highs and lows in the life of John Fulton!
