| 8. | John FOLSOM was born on 2 Dec 1613 in Hingham, Norfolk, England (son of Adam FOULSHAM and Agnes SMITH); died on 27 Dec 1681 in Exeter, Rockingham, New Hampshire. Other Events:
- Also Known As: FOULSHAM, SMYTH
- Occupation: Selectman, farmer, surveyor, sawmill owner
- Immigrant?: Y
- Baptism: 1615, Hingham, Norfolk, England
- Migration: 26 Apr 1638, “Diligent”
- Residence: 1645, Hingham, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Notes:
John and Mary are the ancestors of all the Folsoms in America, with the exception of one family, as related by Mr Abraham Folsom of Boston:
His younger brother, James Madison Folsom, went to Savannah, GA, 1829, and died before the rebellion, had two sons, Dr. Robert W., who fell in the battle of the Wilderness, the colonel of his regiment, and James M., a young lawyer and colonel on the staff of Gov. Brown. As Col. James was passing with a Georgia regiment through Sumter, SC, a crowd of gentlemen and ladies had gathered at the depot to greet them - the ladies throwing bouquets to the officers and soldiers. Col. James caught one, and on his depature found in it a slip of paper, on which was wirtten the name “Rosa Folsom.” His curiosity being greatly excited, he wrote to know about the family, and received the following reply from the young lady’s father: “We are descended from one who espoused the cause of liberty under Cromwell, but who died during the Protectorate. At the Resotration his estates were confiscated; and soon afterwards the sons embarked for America, and landed at Albermarle Sound [this must have been, if at all, at the settlement of the second colony at that place, 1667]. Two of the brothers married in America. Shortly after they simplified their name by spelling it “Folsom”. Col. James M. is the author of the “Heroes of Georgia” and is now clerk of the court of the county of Straffod, NH.
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A Genealogy of the Folsom Family, by Jacob Chapman, Introduction by Rev. N. S. Folsom, D.D., Lawrence, Mass
On the 26th of April, 1638, the ship "Diligent of Ipswich," England, 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, (1633-1637),consisting of ten families and five single person (in all, forty-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 Daniel Cushing, - 1645), and three servants of the family, were fellow-passengers. The rector of the parish, Rev. Robert peck, with his family, consisting of his wife, two children, and servants, also formed part of the company. The immediate occasion of their departure seems to have been trouble in ecclesiastical matters. Their rector, doubtless with the sympathy and aid of most of those constituting the emigrating party, had pulled down the rails of the chancel and alter, and leveled the latter a foot below the church, as it remains to this day. Being prosecuted by Bishop Wren, he left the kingdom, together with his friends, who sold their estates at half their real value, promising to remain with them always.
The party having landed at Boston, Massachusetts, August 10, 1638, immediately proceeded to their place of destination, about fourteen miles south-east from Boston. An Adam Foulsham, probably a s/o the Adam who died in 1627, and a cousin, if not brother of John Foulsham, came from Hingham, Eng. To Hingham, Mass., in about 1639, but returned and died - 1670. Their rector remained about three years, when, hearing that the bishops were deposed, he returned to England in 1641 (the date given by Daniel Cushing), resumed his rectory, and died in 1656. Edward Gilman had with others obtained a grant of land eight miles square in a place now called Rehoboth, near the Rhode Island line, in 1641. In 1647 his name is recorded in Ipswich. Soon afterward, he went to Exeter, N.H., where his sons were already established in business. John Folsom and wife, with their children, followed her father and mother to Exeter, probably no earlier than 1650, the first authentic record of their residence in that town being in the year 1655.
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The orthography and pronunciation of the name have varied in the family itself, as well as among others writing and pronouncing it. The first Anglo-American bearing the name spelt it "Foulsham." His son, Dea. John, wrote it " Fullsom " in 1709 ; and it is signed " Foullsam " in his last will — 1715. In one instance, in the Hingham town records, it is spelt "Fulsham," but always afterward "Foulsham." In the Exeter records it is uniformly written "Folsom" from the year 1659, with one exception in 1681, when the town clerk wrote "Foulshame." In the records of the first parish, Haverhill, Mass., — 1749-64, —it is spelt "Foulsham," "Foulsam," "Folsham,” and "Fulsom." on occasion of the baptism of children of “Josiah Foulsham." Originally it was doubtless spelt "Foulshame," its etymological significance being the fowls home, or breeding-place or mart. The old syllabic division must have been Fouls-hame, the final syllable becoming shortened into "ham," with the first letter silent, pronounced like urn, as may now often be noticed in words ofthat termination. A further shortening appears in 1504, — how extensively practised is uncertain, — in a Latin inscription on a monumental stone in the floor of the church of Repps, Norfolk county, which, translated, is, "Pray for the soul of Mr. Thomas Folsham, Baccalaureate of the Chapel." (Hist, of Norfolk Co., vol. xi, p. 182.) This last mode of spelling appears on modern maps of England, designating the town ; but everywhere it is now written Folsom by those bearing the name.
?In regard to the pronunciation of this word, it is now generally pronounced by the family quite like wholesome. The writer has never known but one exception. And we suggest that this is a preservation of the old way of pronouncing the name : that in the first syllable, "Fouls," the diphthong "ou" was sounded as in "souls," "poultry," &c. Certain it is that this old spelling — fouls (or foules) — of our modern word "fowls" occurs in Chaucer, as in his "House of Fame," and in his "Legend of Nine Good Women," --
”As this foule, when hit, beheld.”
”I hear the foules sing.”
Our suggestion is, moreover, fully borne out by similar phenomena of pronunciation in modern times. We hear " bowling-alley" (once written ’bouling-alley’ , and the sphere or ball, boule) pronounced in two ways, with the first syllable like "ow" in howl and in the drinking-vessel bowl. "Johnson, Elphinstone, and Perry declare for the former, — i. e., as in howl; Sheridan, Scott, Rennell, and Smith pronounce it like hole. Garrick corrected Walker for pronouncing it like 'howl.’” (Early English Pronun., vol. I. p. 152.) Even the pronunciation of the word, when written as Dea. John Folsom wrote it, "Fullsom," has authority in the old pronunciation of the word "Cowper" like that of wound, a hurt, as now heard, with the ‘ou’ as in "group," or, possibly, nearer the sound of o-oo, the sound of the ‘ow’ in "Cowper," as in howl, being "given it only by those who do not know the family.",,
John married Mary GILMAN on 4 Oct 1636 in Hingham, Norfolk, England. Mary (daughter of Edward GILMAN and Mary CLARK) was born about 1615 in Hingham, Norfolk, England; died about 1692 in Exeter, Rockingham, New Hampshire. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
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Old Dead Relatives
1718 - 1753 (34 years)