The Hon. George Taylor Fulford |
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Senate for Brockville, Ontario | |
In office January 29, 1900 – October 15, 1905 |
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Appointed by | Wilfrid Laurier |
Personal details | |
Born |
Brockville, Canada West |
August 8, 1852
Died | October 15, 1905 Newton, Massachusetts |
(aged 53)
Political party | Liberal |
George Taylor Fulford (August 8, 1852 – October 15, 1905) was a Canadian businessman and politician.
Born in Brockville, Canada West (now Ontario), to a family of United Empire Loyalist stock, he was the youngest son of Hiram Fulford and Martha Harris.
In 1880, Fulford married Mary Wilder White (1856–1946), a socialite from Wisconsin, and had three children. Dorothy Marston (1881–1949), their eldest, married Arthur Charles Hardy, son of former Ontario Premier Arthur Sturgis Hardy, in 1901 in a ceremony at Fulford Place, the family estate. Martha Harris (1883–1910) died young, while giving birth. The long-awaited male heir arrived much later and after one near-fatal miscarriage, when Mary Fulford was 46 years of age. George Taylor II (1902–1987) was a politician himself (Member of the Canadian House of Commons) and owned Fulford Place until his death.
Fulford went to business college in Belleville, Ontario, and apprenticed with his brother, William, who was a dispensing chemist in Brockville. He took over his brother’s modest apothecary in 1874 and eventually built on it to form a successful patent medicine company.
He was elected to the town council in 1879 and served as an alderman for 12 terms. He was involved with the Liberal Party of Canada and became a friend of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He was appointed to the Canadian Senate in 1900 representing the senatorial division of Brockville, Ontario. He served until his death in 1905.
George Taylor Fulford is reported to be the first Canadian fatal automobile accident victim on record. On October 8, 1905, he was riding in a chauffeured open roadster in Newton, Massachusetts with his business partner Willis T. Hanson, of Schenectady, N.Y., when it slammed into the side of a streetcar while crossing a blind intersection. Fulford died seven days later, at age fifty-three. His widow never remarried. ( W.T. Hanson, not critically injured, assumed management of the Canadian and foreign business of the Dr. Williams Co., in addition to his own U.S. franchise. The chauffeur died of head trauma October 11.)