♂John Folsom

John Folsom (died 27 December 1681) was a settler of Hingham, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, and later of Exeter, New Hampshire, who had come from the older Hingham in the English county of Norfolk. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) through his son Peter Folsom (1649–1718). Thirty-five years after he left England, he gave Peter the house, buildings and about fifty acres he still owned at Hingham in Norfolk.

Hingham

He was probably born about 1615, in or near Hingham. John Folsom and Mary Gilman were married at Hingham, in Norfolk, on 4 October 1636, according to the family genealogies. In May 1638 he and his father-in-law, Edward Gilman, were among the shippers of wheat and malt entered at Yarmouth in the Blessing, bound for New England. In 1638 the couple are said to have crossed to New England with Mary’s parents, Edward Gilman and Mary Clarke, and her younger brothers and sisters, in the company that sailed with Robert Peck, the rector of Hingham, and in the autumn of that year they settled at Hingham, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

According to the town’s history, Hingham granted him land between the “Playne” and the Common, and gave him and Captain Joshua Hobart leave to use certain streams for a saw-mill. In 1645 he was one of the seven men chosen to order the town’s affairs. That year the town’s militia company fell out with the colony’s government over its captaincy, rejecting Anthony Eames and choosing Bozoan Allen. John was reportedly fined for criticizing the deputy governor, John Winthrop^W, and when he appealed, the General Court upheld the judgment by only fifteen votes to fourteen. In 1654, the genealogies say, he sat in that court himself as Hingham’s deputy.

Their children were baptized at Hingham: Samuel, Nathaniel, two sons named Israel, the elder of whom died in infancy, Peter in 1649, Mary, and Ephraim, the youngest, in February 1654/5. In the 1650s the family moved north to Exeter, and on 9 July 1659, by the town’s history, John sold their house near the Hingham training field to Daniel Cushing.

Exeter

At Exeter he was a selectman in 1660 and 1668 and sat on juries in eight years between 1662 and 1678, according to the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire. In April 1673 he made Peter his attorney, and by a deed of gift made “in respect of ye paternall love & affection & fatherly care & good will” he passed to him his house, buildings and about fifty acres at Hingham in Norfolk, “near Norrald”.

In 1676 John quarreled with Mary’s brother Moses Gilman over land at Exeter. At the Hampton court in May, Moses sued him for fencing in a parcel that Moses claimed, and lost; in June John complained that Moses had pulled up the fence between their lands. The “great endeavors of friends to persuade peace proved altogether fruitless”. Judgment went to John, Moses was to keep the fence up “until after the next Indian harvest”, and the two men were advised “to live in peace and love in the meantime as their relation and duty required”. The same court at Hampton in May refused to accept John as the constable Exeter had chosen, finding him not “a meet person for that office”, and ordered the town to choose another.

Death

John Folsom died at Exeter on 27 December 1681 without a will. Mary outlived him, and she too died intestate before 7 January 1692/3, when the administration of both their estates was granted to their son Samuel. The inventory of the estate of John Folsom and Mary Folsom, his wife, taken on 17 January 1692/3, came to £11 12s.

Lines of descent

The two lines of descent from John Folsom and Mary Gilman to Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) run through their sons Peter Folsom (1649–1718) and, most likely, John Folsom (died before 6 December 1715). The lines meet again in Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), whose parents Elizabeth Gilman (1727–1806) and John Dudley (1725–1805) both descend from John Folsom and Mary Gilman.

Notes

Birth and name

No record of his birth or baptism is known. The History of the Town of Hingham (1893) says he was born about 1614, and Elizabeth Knowles Folsom’s Genealogy of the Folsom Family (1938) says about 1615, adding that, as of 1927, no baptism for him was known in the registers of Hingham and the towns near it. Jacob Chapman’s Genealogy of the Folsom Family (1882) says he was baptized at Hingham in 1615 and was a son of Adam Foulsham; neither claim is backed by a record. According to the 1938 genealogy, the marriage register names him “John Fowlesham alias Smith”, and the Genealogical Dictionary says he called himself Folsham alias Smith in a deed to his daughter Mary. The records spell the name Foulsham, Fulsham, ffulsham, Folsham and Foulsam.

Sources for his life

The marriage date of 4 October 1636 and the crossing of 1638 come from the Folsom genealogies of 1882 and 1938, the 1893 Hingham history and the Genealogical Dictionary. The Blessing entry of 2 May 1638 is in Peter Wilson Coldham’s Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607–1660, from the Exchequer port books. The Hingham land grant, the saw-mill, the office of 1645 and the sale of 1659 are in the 1893 Hingham history, which also says he settled there in the autumn of 1638. The Genealogical Dictionary gives the fine of 1645, the vote of fifteen to fourteen, the deputyship of 1654, his Exeter offices and the move to Exeter in 1659; the 1938 genealogy describes the militia quarrel and gives the fine as twenty pounds, later remitted. The 1882 genealogy dates the move to Exeter about 1655.

The power of attorney and deed of gift of April 1673 are in the old Norfolk County deeds of Massachusetts, page 439; a family paper of the 19th century cites the same deed as Book 2, leaf 291. The court cases of 1676 are printed in the Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, volume 6, pages 139, 143 and 209. The date of death, 27 December 1681, is given alike by the 1882 and 1938 genealogies, the 1893 Hingham history and the Genealogical Dictionary. The administration and inventory are abstracted in the Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire, volume 1, page 380.

The children’s baptisms

The Folsom genealogies take the baptisms from the diary of Peter Hobart, the minister of Hingham. They give Samuel’s baptism as 3 October 1641; the 1893 Hingham history gives 11 October 1641.

The second line

The printed genealogies of the Folsom family, beginning with Jacob Chapman’s of 1882, make the Exeter deacon John Folsom a son of John Folsom and Mary Gilman. That parentage rests on those genealogies alone.