(see Calhoun Pedigree Chart #298)
I stumbled across a treasure while hunting for details on the Folsom line of my father’s family. A gentleman by the name of Jacob Chapman has compiled a book called A Genealogy of the Folsom Family. I have provided a link on the left under "Research Sources". He has so many details, dates and stories, that it is difficult to do anything other than quote him, which I will designate with quotation marks. I may paraphrase some of what he says as well, so consider this whole post (and the next Folsom posts) a quote from Mr. Chapman.
“Hingham, England, a town about 14 miles WSW of Norwich, and 97 NE of London, in the neighborhood of a small lake about a mile in circumference, and having a fine old stone church with a tower and a chime of eight bells.” It was here that John Folsom (298.4) was baptized in 1615. He was married in October 1636 to Mary Gilman (298.5), the oldest child of Edward and Mary Clark Gilman.“On the 26th of April, 1638, the ship “Diligent, of Ipswich,” Eng., of 350 tons burden, John Martin, master, set sail from the mouth of the Thames for Massachusetts bay, having on board nineteen families and six or eight single persons, - in all, one hundred and thirty-three. Twelve of these families, numbering eighty-four souls, were from old Hingham – the rest from the immediate vicinity; and they had all embarked for the purpose of joining a colony settled in Hingham, Mass. (1633-37), consisting of ten families and five signle persons (in all, forth-nine), who had been their friends and neighbors in old Hingham. Among those now emigrating were John Foulsham, of Hingham, then twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, and his young wife, to whom he had been married about a year and a half. They were attended by two servants. His wife’s father and mother (Edward and Mary Clark Gilman, of Hingham), three younger brothers (Edward, not quite twenty-one years old, John and Moses), two younger sisters (sarah, and Lydia who married Dnaiel Cushing – 1645), and three servants of the family, were fellow-passengers. The rector of the parish, Rev. Robert Peck, with his family, consisting of wife, two children, and two servants, also formed part of the company. The immediate occasion of their departure seems to have been trouble in ecclesiastical matters.”
“The party having landed at Boston, Mass, August 10, 1638, immediately proceeded to their place of destination, [Hingham, Mass], about fourteen miles south-east from Boston.” It is there that John and Mary Gilman had seven children and in this order: Samuel (about 1638/9), John (1640/41), Nathaniel (abt 1644), Israel (abt 1646), Peter (abt 1649), Mary (abt 1651), and Ephraim (1654).
“John Folsom and wife, with their children, followed her father and mother to Exeter, probably not earlier than 1650, the first authentic record of their residence in that town being in the year 1655.” “He lived on the west side of the river, where the first settlements in Exeter were made …”
From 1675-1676 an armed conflict arose between Native American inhabitants and English colonists. Called King Philip's War, after the main leader of the Native American side, it "was proportionately one of the bloodiest and costliest in the history of America." Brothers Samuel and Peter (as a Lieutenant) served in this war.
John Folsom died two days after Christmas 1681 in Exeter, New Hampshire. His wife, Mary lived an additional eight to ten years after that.
On June 11, 1709, at age 55, Ephraim Folsom was “shot by and Indian as he was riding home from the village of Exeter.”
