Harry Barry “Hal” Fullerton was born in Ohio on August 15, 1857. Between 1877-1886, Fullerton worked in a variety of industrial and commercial businesses; from an oil company in western Pennsylvania to a cotton seed oil mill in Texas. In 1887, he began work for Seeger & Guernsey, a company that specialized in the trade of agricultural machinery. It was around this time he became interested in photography. From 1892-1893, he spent time working in Mexico City.
He met Edith Loring Jones and they began a five-year courtship. In 1894, Fullerton began working in New York. Due to an illness, he was advised to take up bicycling. He joined a Brooklyn-based bicycling club called the Whirling Dervishes in 1895. At the time, he also joined the Brooklyn Academy of Photography. He was its President from 1897-1899.
In 1898, he began
working for the Long Island Railroad. He and Edith married in 1898. In 1902,
the couple bought a home in Huntington. They named their homestead Mira
Flores.
Since the 1870s, the Long Island Railroad sponsored illustrated promotional publications. In 1898, Unique Long Island was issued. This 96 page booklet contained 165 halftone reproductions of images taken by Fullerton. The railroad issued this publication annually for the next six years with Fullerton as the editor and designer. In his job as Special Agent for the railroad, he was encouraged to advance the interests of Long Island. One of his more well known was his promotion of Charles “Mile a Minute” Murphy’s notorious ride in1899.
He continued to contribute to Unique Long Island and also began submitting photos with stories written by his wife for Country Life magazine. They even collaborated on a book about vegetable gardening. In 1905, Ralph Peters was elected president of the Long Island Railroad. He quickly created an Agricultural Department and named Hal as its head. His mission was to create a farm out of nothing in Wading River. It did so well that he created another farm in Medford. He published the results of the success, which became a well regarded book. Public interest in the farms was great enough that a leaflet was created to update them on the progress of these two farms. This leaflet was published every two weeks until the end of 1909. In 1909, the Fullteron family left Mira Flores and settled into the farm at Medford.
During World War I, Hal was key in creating Camp Upton and Camp Mills for the soldiers. In 1921, the Fullertons purchased a twenty-acre plot of land in East Setauket named Lorelope. Hal retired from the Long Island Railroad in1927. Hal died on January 11, 1935.
Source:
Sachs, Charles L. The
Blessed Isle: Hal B. Fullerton and His Image of Long Island 1897-1927. Heart
of the Lakes Publishing, 1991
