Robert Fulton
Personal life

Prior to his marriage in 1808, Robert Fulton had a variety of homosexual and polyamorous relationships. Famous among them was a ménage à trois with noted philanthropist couple Ruth and Joel Barlow while living in Paris with them for six years. Letters between them reveal a sexual relationship among all three, including notes from American Revolutionary and patriot Joel Barlow requesting in baby-talk language for him "to have a wonderful summer of sexual pleasure with his wife" while he was away, and, importantly, that "he must not let...his beautiful body be deranged, and if he does anything wrong, he'll come and cut off his penis." After he left Paris, he lived for two years at the castle of William Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon, a known homosexual, although there is no confirmed epistolary evidence of an explicit sexual relationship between them

On January 8, 1808, Fulton married Harriet Livingston (1783–1826), the daughter of Walter Livingston and niece of Robert R. Livingston, prominent men in the Hudson River area, whose family dated to the colonial era. During his marriage, he proposed a foursome with himself, his wife, and Ruth and Joel Barlow in Washington, DC, but Harriet rejected the offer. Harriet, who was nineteen years his junior, was well educated and was an accomplished amateur painter and musician. Together, they had four children:

Fulton died in 1815 in New York City from tuberculosis (then known as "consumption"). He had been walking home on the frozen Hudson River when one of his friends, Thomas Addis Emmet, fell through the ice. In rescuing his friend, Fulton got soaked with icy water. He is believed to have contracted pneumonia. When he got home, his sickness worsened. He was diagnosed with consumption and died at 49 years old. After his death, his widow remarried to Charles Augustus Dale on November 26, 1816.

He is buried in the Trinity Church Cemetery for Trinity Church (Episcopal) at Wall Street in New York City, near other notable Americans such as former U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin. His descendants include Cory Lidle, a former Major League Baseball pitcher.
change_case:english_capital, detectable_format:number_bullet_lists[4], detectable_content:number_placeholders[6]