Robert Burwell Fulton III

1921 - 2014

Robert Burwell Fulton III of Kennett Square Robert Burwell Fulton III of Kennett Square and Charlottesville, Va. passed away peacefully in Charlottesville in the company of loving family on Nov. 19, 2014. Born in Washington D.C. on Oct. 24, 1921, he was the cherished son of Harry Rascoe Fulton of Oxford, Miss. and Nell Cribbs of Tuscaloosa, Ala.; grandson of Robert Burwell Fulton, Chancellor of the University of Mississippi; great grandson of Landon Cabell Garland, first Chancellor of Vanderbilt University; and descendent of the Garland, Henry and Rose families in Central Virginia. He graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Johns Hopkins University. He served in France and Germany in World War II with the 14th and 4th Armored Divisions, was the youngest field promotion to Major in the European Theater, and was awarded the Bronze Star. After the war, he earned a PhD in Mineral Sciences at Stanford University, where he was President of the Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter. At Stanford, he met and in 1949 married Mariamne Finley Cross, with whom he shared a devoted marriage of sixty years until her passing in 2009. Dr. Fulton's fifty year career in international mineral exploration and sourcing for U.S. industry started with work for the New Jersey Zinc Company in southwest Virginia. In 1956 he joined the E. I. duPont de Nemours Company at its headquarters in Wilmington, Del. His thirty-five year career with DuPont and subsequent international consulting based on his fluorspar expertise took him to more than sixty countries. He was a Senior Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists; Chairman of the Philadelphia Section of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME); and a member of the Emergency Minerals Administration of the National Defense Executive Reserve and other natural resource planning groups. Dr. Fulton loved travel second only to his family, to whom he exemplified the Rose clan motto "constant and true". He is survived by five children, David Cross Fulton of Roseland, Va.; Martha Montgomery Fulton Bayard of Wilmington, Del.; Nancy Embry Fulton Boyer of Newark, Del.; Laura Olivia Fulton Bennett of Silver Spring, Md.; and Robert Burwell Fulton IV of Brick, N.J.; a daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Whitley Fulton; a son-in-law, William W. Boyer Jr.; eight grandchildren, Sophie Anne duPont Bayard of Portland, Ore.; Louisa Lee Bayard of Wilmington, Del.; Helen Hoy Boyer of Washington, D.C.; William Walter Boyer III of Newark, Del; Robert Eugene Bennett of Coral Gables, Fla.; Victor Thomas Bennett of Charleston, S.C.; Lydia Runyan Fulton of Scranton, Pa.; and Robert Burwell Fulton V of Brick, N.J.; and a great grandson, Finley Bayard of Wilmington, Del. A memorial service will be held next spring in Washington, D.C. Condolences and requests for information about the service may be sent to the family at RBFMemorial@ gmail.com. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, P.O. Box 807, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425 in memory of Bob Fulton.