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- Joseph was only 6 years old at the time of his father's death. Shortly after, the family moved 27.2 miles southwest to Northfield, New Hampshire.
In June of 1836, at the age of eighteen, Joseph became a cadet at the Military Academy at West Point. Four years later, in June 1840, he graduated with honors. On November 3, 1840, he held the rank of Second Lieutenant in the 5th infantry of the U.S. Army. He served under the command of General William Jenkins Worth in Florida during the second Seminole war.
In 1844, he came back to the Academy at West Point where he served as an Instructor of Infantry Tactics for two years. In the Autumn of 1846, Lieutenant Folsom left West Point for California with the First Regiment of New York volunteers, under the command of Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson. They sailed for six months before arriving at a port in Yerba Buena (early San Francisco) in March 1847. He was promoted to the rank of Captain and held the position of Staff-officer in the Quartermaster's department. Folsom received orders from General Kearney to inspect the Bay of San Francisco to select an area for the Army's Military Depot. He was also the first Collector of the Port of San Francisco under American rule from 1847 to 1849.
He invested in real estate by purchasing land owed by William Alexander Leidesdorff from Anna Maria Spark for $75,000. Increasing land values in California made him a millionare. In 1854, He chose an area of land which he named "Granite City". In 1855, Joseph Folsom hired Theodore Dehone Judah, an engineer, to survey the area and map out the town. Folsom chose to name the streets of his town after the names of his friends, family, and other important people in California. He became the second president of the Sacramento Valley Railroad.
Joseph Folsom suffered from neuralgia, a painful nerve condition, and had symptoms of pneumonia. He died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight of renal failure while visiting friends at Mission San José (now Fremont) on Thursday, July 19, 1855. In February 1856, the executors of Folsom's estate: Henry W. Halleck, Archibald C. Peacby, and P. Warren Van Winkle changed the name of Granite City to Folsom, in his honor.
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Laurel Hill Cemetery (AKA Lone Mountain Cemetery) no longer exists. It was originally located between California and Geary Streets, and Presidio Ave and Arguello Blvd. In 1941 the graves were moved to Cypress Lawn in Colma, CA. At some point the tombstone for Capt. Folsom ended up in Santa Clara, CA in a field of weeds, almost unreadable. After the efforts of several individuals, the tombstone (or at least a portion of it) was taken to the Folsom History Museum at 823 Sutter Street in Folsom, CA where it is installed in a nice little niche dedicated to Capt. Joseph Libbey Folsom.
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At Mission San Jose Captain Folsom died at the age of thirty-eight years and two months. He was a bachelor, and rumored at the time said he was engaged to a Senator's daughter. Four years she mourned his loss and never married. Captain Folsom's biographers have said that "in manner he exhibited a slight formality through the influence of his military education," and that "he was a man of stainless character, and irreproachable integrity."
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Old Dead Relatives
1816 - 1855 (39 years)
