George Folsom was born in Kennebunk, Maine, the son of Thomas and Edna (Ela) Folsom. He was descended from John Foulsham who landed at Hingham, Massachusetts, and in 1638, settled in Exeter, New Hampshire. Gen, Nathaniel Folsom, who distinguished himself in the French and Indian War, and was a member of the Continental Congress, was a less remote ancestor.
George’s father, a tavern-keeper and also a jeweler moved from Kennebunk to Portland in 1809, so that the boy’s early education was in the latter city and at Phillips Academy in Exeter.
He was graduated from Harvard in 1822, and then started to study law in the office of Judge Ether Shepley at Saco, Me.
In leisure moments, however, he showed a predilection for historical research in writing a History of Saco and Biddeford (1830).
He practised law first in Framingham, and then in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his keener interest turned to the American Antiquarian Society.
The second volume of that society’s Transactions and Collections, published in 1836, was produced under Folsom’s direction. In 1837 he made New York City his home and almost immediately identified himself with the New York Historical Society.
He became the society’s librarian, editing the Collections for the year 1841 in which source materials for Dutch New York were emphasized.
Another volume, Mexico in 1842 . .. to which is added an account of Texas and Yucatan and of the Santa Fé Expedition, followed, at a time when popular attention was being drawn to Texas and Mexico.
Three years in the New York state Senate were followed by three years of travel before his return to New York, where, for the year 1858-59 he was editor of the Historical Magazine.
His preface to volume II, modestly subscribed “G. F. ,” states that he sought no other reward than "the gratification of an old taste. ” His selection of a summer home in Brattleboro, Vt. , identified him with that state as well as New York during the remainder of his life, and accounts for his active interest in the reorganization of the Vermont Historical Society.
He died in Rome where he had gone for his health.
He was president of the American Ethnological Society in New York from 1859 until his death and was a member of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, the Deaf and Dumb Society, and the Union League Club. Folsom is to be remembered, indeed, for his quiet insistence that source materials demand the attention of those who would seek the truth in history. His linguistic ability as well as the breadth of his interest was shown in his production in 1843 of the Dispatches of Hernando Cortes, translated from the original Spanish for the first time.
Folsom had political interests also. Though he was at first a Whig, he was elected in 1844 to the New York state Senate as a “Native American, ” and his friendship with President Taylor brought to him in 1850 an appointment as chargé d’affaires to the Netherlands.
He was president of the American Ethnological Society in New York from 1859 until his death and was a member of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, the Deaf and Dumb Society, and the Union League Club
In 1839 he married Margaret Cornelia Winthrop of New York.
