[2] The first non-Native Americans to ever set foot in what is now Fulton County, Indiana, were French traders.

Few of them remained permanently as year-round residents of the area and by the 1830s there was no French population in what is now Fulton County.

These were “Yankee” settlers, that is to say they were descended from the English Puritans who settled New England during the colonial era.

The old stock Yankee population had large families, often bearing up to ten children in one household.

As a result, there was not enough land for every family to have a self-sustaining farm, and Yankee settlers began leaving New England for the Midwestern United States.

[3] They were aided in this effort by the construction and completion of the Erie Canal which made traveling to the region much easier, causing an additional surge in migrants coming from New England.

Added to this was the end of the Black Hawk War, which made the region much safer to travel through and settle in for White settlers.

[4] In the case of Fulton County, there were no attempts by United States settlers to permanently settle the area until the conclusion of the Blackhawk War.

[5] These settlers were primarily members of the Congregational Church, though due to the Second Great Awakening, many of them had converted to Methodism, and some had become Baptists before coming to what is now Cook County.

They laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes.

The commissioners are charged with executing the acts legislated by the council, collecting revenue, and managing the day-to-day functions of the county government.

Each of these elected officers serves a term of four years and oversees a different part of county government.

[18] Fulton County is part of Indiana's 2nd congressional district and in 2015 was represented by Jackie Walorski in the United States Congress.

The only exceptions to this have been Woodrow Wilson's plurality in 1912 thanks to a divided Republican vote and Franklin D. Roosevelts narrow majority in 1932 in the midst of his national landslide victory.

The Democrats have only come reasonably close to carrying the county once since then, when Barry Goldwater won it over Lyndon Johnson by only 36 votes.