Charles W. Fulton

Charles William Fulton was born in Lima, Ohio, on August 24, 1853, to Jacob and Eliza A. Fulton.[1] The family moved to Iowa in 1855 and settled in Magnolia, Harrison County.[2] Fulton attended the common schools there, and then moved to Pawnee City, Nebraska, in 1870 where he was educated at the Pawnee City Academy.[1][2] He taught school while he studied law in Nebraska, and passed the bar in April 1875 in that state.[1] Three days after passing the bar he departed for Oregon, arriving in Portland on April 20.[1] Fulton then taught school for a few months to the south in Linn County at Waterloo.[1] In July 1875, he relocated to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River where he entered private legal practice.[1]

In 1878, Fulton was elected to the Oregon State Senate to represent Clatsop, Columbia, and Tillamook counties as a Republican.[3] He served his four-year term, remaining through the 1880 legislative session.[4] In 1880, he began working as Astoria's city attorney, keeping the job until 1882.[2] In 1890, he was elected to his old seat in the senate for a four-year term.[5] During the 1893 session he served as President of the Senate.[6]

In 1894, he was in contention for the Republican nomination for Oregon Governor, but William Paine Lord was selected as the candidate at the Republican convention.[7] Fulton did not return to the senate during the next two legislatures, but was back during the 1898 special session.[8] In 1900, he won another four-year term, and served as Senate President during the 1901 legislature.[9]

He also served in the 1903 session before the Oregon Legislative Assembly elected him to the U.S. Senate.[1] Fulton served in that office from March 4, 1903, to March 3, 1909.[2] While in the Senate he was chairman, Committee on Canadian Relations (Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Congresses) and a member of the Committee on Claims (Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Congresses).[2] He failed to win re-election in 1908, and served only a single term in the U.S. Senate.[2]

In 1909 President Taft sought to appoint Fulton as U. S. ambassador to China, but following opposition from Chinese-Americans in Portland and San Francisco,[10] Fulton declined the nomination.[11]

Following Congress, he resumed the practice of law in Portland.[2] Fulton married in 1886 to Ada M. Hobson, and they had one child, a son.[1] Elmer Lincoln Fulton, Charles' brother, was a United States representative from Oklahoma. Charles William Fulton died on January 27, 1918, at the age of 64 and was buried in Astoria at Ocean View Cemetery.[1][2]

• The New York Times
• Oregon History: The Oregon System