Fulton is a rural
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
in
Lauderdale County,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
, United States. Founded in 1827, Fulton is the oldest settlement in Lauderdale County.
History
Fulton was founded in 1827 on of land owned by James Trimble. In the following two years, the population rose to 600. Around 1830, after a deadly fever struck the community and killed 200, the remainder of the population moved away; no inhabitants remained by 1832. It was re-surveyed and re-founded in 1835.
[
]
Economy
After the abolition of slavery
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
, sharecropping
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land.
Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...
was the primary means of income for low income families in the area. Mostly for the cultivation of cotton, land would be used by sharecroppers in return for a share of the crop to the landowner. Modern machines such as the cotton picker
A cotton picker is either a machine that harvests cotton, or a person who picks ripe cotton fibre from the plants. The machine is also referred to as a cotton harvester.
History
In many societies, like America, slave and serf labor was utiliz ...
have made the manual cultivation obsolete over time as they took over the work from manual laborers.
As of 2008, there were no industries in Fulton.
Geography
Fulton is at coordinates . The settlement is located on the banks of the Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
, north of the mouth of the Hatchie River
The Hatchie River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed June 3, 2011 river in northern Mississippi and southwestern Tennessee. It is of considerable geographic, cultural, a ...
.[ Fulton is situated on the southeastern edge of the ]New Madrid Seismic Zone
The New Madrid Seismic Zone (), sometimes called the New Madrid Fault Line, is a major seismic zone and a prolific source of intraplate earthquakes (earthquakes within a tectonic plate) in the Southern and Midwestern United States, stretching t ...
, an area with a high earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
risk. Tennessee State Route 87
State Route 87 (SR 87) is a secondary state highway located in Lauderdale and Haywood counties in West Tennessee. SR 87 runs west to east through mixed terrain of bluffs and rolling hills in Lauderdale County and mostly river bottoms in Haywood ...
and Tennessee State Route 207
State Route 207 (SR 207), also known as Park Road, is a short state highway in Lauderdale County, Tennessee
Lauderdale County is a county located on the western edge of the U.S. state of Tennessee, with its border the Mississippi River. As o ...
both pass through Fulton.
See also
* Battle of Fort Pillow
The Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow massacre, was fought on April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River in Henning, Tennessee, during the American Civil War. The battle ended with a massacre of Union soldiers ( ...
References
Unincorporated communities in Lauderdale County, Tennessee
Unincorporated communities in Tennessee
{{LauderdaleCountyTN-geo-stub