Robert Fulton
The Boy of the Conestoga: 1765-1815
It was mid-afternoon on July 3d, 1778. A group of a dozen boys sat in the long grass that grew close down to the banks of the narrow, twisting Conestoga River, in eastern Pennsylvania. All of the boys were hard at work engaged in a mysterious occupation. By the side of one of them lay a great pile of narrow pasteboard tubes, each about two feet long, and in front of this same small boy stood a keg filled with what looked like black sand.
Each of the group was busy working with one of the pasteboard tubes, stopping one end tightly with paper, and then pouring in handfuls of the "sand" from the keg, and from time to time dropping small colored balls into the tubes at various layers of the sand. These balls came from a box that was guarded by the same boy who had charge of the tubes and the keg, and he dealt them out to the others with continual words of caution.
"Be careful of that one, George," he said, handing him one of the colored balls; "those red ones were very hard to make, and I haven't many of them, but they'll burn splendidly, and make a great show when they go off."
"How do you stop the candle when all the balls and powder are in, Rob?" asked another boy.
"See, this way," said the young instructor, and he slipped a short fuse into the tube and fastened the end with paper and a piece of twine.
"There's something'll let folks know to-morrow's the Fourth of July," he added proudly, as he laid the rocket beside the keg of powder.
"What made you think of them, Rob?" asked one of the boys, looking admiringly at the lad of fourteen who had just spoken.
"I knew something had to be done," said Robert, "as soon as I heard they weren't going to let us burn any candles to-morrow night 'cause candles are so scarce. I knew we had to do something to show how proud we are that they signed the Declaration of Independence two years ago, and so I thought things over last night and worked out a way of making these rockets. They'll be much grander than last year's candle parade. They wouldn't let us light the streets, so we'll light the skies."