My Genealogy Hound

ARAD FULLER. The material wealth of a community is largely advanced by the possession of good live stock. Chautauqua county is justly renowned for the superior stock she raises, and to Arad Fuller the credit is largely due for its introduction. This gentleman, a son of Amos and Charity (Roberts) Fuller, was born November 13, 1822, at Norwich, Windsor county, Vermont. His great-grandfather, William Fuller, was born in Boston, Mass., where he married Persis Paine, either a sister or niece of Robert Treat Paine. Their children were: William, Persis, Witt and a daughter (name forgotten).

Witt Fuller was born in Massachusetts and married Deborah Garfield, by whom he had eight children: Persis, Betsey, Lucy, Laura, Walden, Nathan, Arad and Amos. He removed to Vermont, where he died in 1809 or 1810. Amos Fuller was born in Vermont, but in 1833 he emigrated to Chautauqua county and settled in the town of Poland, where he lived until his death, which occurred September 27, 1879, aged eighty-one years. By occupation he was a lumberman and farmer, in politics a whig and republican, and was a member of the Methodist church, but before his death he became a Universalist. Amos Fuller married Charity Roberts and had six children, two sons and four daughters, of whom Arad is the oldest. The daughters died when young, and the other son, Danford D., went to Iowa and afterwards to Dakota, where he died in 1885.

Arad Fuller was educated in the early public schools and began life as a lumberman, subsequently purchasing a small farm in Poland, to which he added until his death, when he owned about six hundred acres of land. He early devoted his attention to raising fine stock, and brought some fine blood to Chautauqua county. A clipping from a Jamestown paper, published at the time of his death, April 11, 1887, says: “All these years Arad Fuller has been one of the representative men of southern Chautauqua, full of ambition, possessed of great industry, and loving his work he has lived for a purpose and filled it well. He was a great lover of fine stock and always spent his money freely in any investments that tended to elevate and develop the same.

“Chautanquans owe much of their celebrated stock, today, to the good judgment exercised in the past by Arad Fuller.

“It is proper here to say that no man was better or more favorably known to this community than Mr. Fuller. He was genial and always glad to meet his fellow-citizens, they, in return, ever had for him a warm and cordial reception.

“He will be greatly missed. His counsel and advice will no more encourage his friends, but his memory will remain, and in future years, as now, many of us will recall the grandeur, the integrity and the association of Arad Fuller.”

Arad Fuller married Malvina Bill, on March 4, 1846. She was a daughter of Norton B. and Cementha (Ransom) Bill. The father of Mrs. Fuller was a native of New England, and came to this county from Oneida county, N.Y., in 1830, and located in Poland, where he followed farming until his death, in 1871. Mrs. Fuller was the second child of a family of seven. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller had three children: Sophia, married John Ely, a farmer living in Kennedy, Poland town, this county; Martha A., at home; and Frank, who wedded Elizabeth Phillips, of Villanova, and lives in South Dayton, Cattaraugus county.

Politically he was a republican, a kind friend and a devoted husband and father.