DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 751 



versally beloved. "The best boy in school and the foremost in scholar- 

 ship" was the judgment of his teachers and school-fellows. It is a 

 good test of a boy to be tried as the playmate of his younger sisters, 

 and Charles was held by his an older brother without peer. 



Both of his parents were natives of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 

 The major portion of his ancestors on both sides were of the English 

 race, but the progenitors of the American branches came early to New 

 England, the Folsoms * settling in Exeter, New Hampshire, and the 

 Penhallows, whose name his mother bore, in Portsmouth. They were 

 all active, respected people, many of them prominent in public life. 



Nathaniel Smith Folsom, Dr. Folsom's father, was graduated one 

 of the foremost in a somewhat notable class at Dartmouth College 

 in 1828. He studied for the ministry at the Andover Theological Sem- 

 inary, but was soon in the ranks of the Unitarians, and after some years 

 of pastoral work in New England was appointed (in 1849) to a profes- 

 sorship in the Theological School at Meadville. He was a fine clas- 

 sical scholar, high-minded and conscientious. From him, as well as 

 from his mother, Charles inherited the instinct for service to his fellow- 

 men that was so prominent in his nature. 



Mrs. Folsom was a woman of rare sweetness and evenness of temper, 

 of fine and strong character, with the fidelity to duty and the steadiness 

 of purpose that had been dominant traits in her family for generations. 



In 1861 Mr. Folsom resigned the professorship in Meadville, and in 

 1862 moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where he engaged in teach- 

 ing. Here the family remained for many years. I recall with pleasure 

 a short visit to them at that place, a cross-country walk with Dr. Fol- 

 som, then a medical student, and the impression made upon me by 

 his gentle, quiet manner, his simplicity and his love of nature. But 

 during most of the Concord period he was away from home, at Port 

 Royal, or studying his profession, and before this he was at Exeter 

 Academy and Harvard College, where he was graduated with his class 

 in 1862, the second year of the war. 



Dr. Folsom would have enlisted in the army but for the solicitation 

 of his parents. An elder brother was then living in the South and had 

 been drafted into the Confederate ranks, and they could not bear the 

 thought of their two sons meeting upon opposite sides. This brother 

 was heard from once during the war, through a weather-beaten letter 

 which he managed to get smuggled through the lines, and it was after- 

 wards positively ascertained that he had fallen in 1862. Instead of 

 entering the army, Dr. Folsom offered his services to aid in carrying out 



* The name of the first settler (1638) was written Foulsham. 



