Author: Fullarton, John
Biography:
FULLARTON, John (c. 1809-75: ancestry.co.uk)
In addition to Feudal Scenes (1833), John Fullarton published Wanderings in the British Isles and Other Poems (1853) and O’More: A Tale of War and Other Poems (1867); O’More is prefaced by his autobiography. Born in Ballynure, County Antrim, he was the second son of a reed maker in the weaving industry. The names of his parents are not known. When he was about three, he moved to live in an isolated farmhouse near Ballynure with his grandfather; he remained there until he was eleven when, on the death of his grandfather, he returned home to Ballynure. He learned his father’s trade and wrote verse from an early age. In about 1832 he married; the names of his wife and their daughter are not known. Increased mechanisation meant a decline in the linen weaving industry in Antrim and Fullarton began working in an engineering and millwright establishment in 1843. He stayed with the business when it relocated to Belfast in 1846 and worked until June 1865. His wife died in 1856. His biographies of Ulster poets, including James Orr, Thomas Beggs, W. H. Drummond, and Andrew McKenzie, were published in the Ulster Magazine in 1861 and are an important contemporary source of information. In 1866 he made the second of two visits to Scotland where he visited places associated with Robert Burns (q.v.). Fullarton died at the home of his daughter and son-in-law on 12 Dec. 1875 and was interred in the Ballynure burial ground. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Dec. 2021; Belfast Newsletter 13 Dec. 1875; Ulster Magazine and Monthly Review of Science and Literature [1861]; James Fullarton, “Some Recollections of the Author’s Life and Writings,” O’More: A Tale of War and Other Poems [1867]) SR