Main Content
Brother Brown concluded with a report on conditions then existing in Council Bluffs""
Correspondence: St. Louis Luminary, September 29, 1855:
"Brother Spencer, we have a Branch of the Church here of some eighty members Brother William H. Fulsom is the Presiding Elder,
who with Brother Francis A. Brown and myself, hold meetings regularly every Sabbath and preach and bear Testimony to the trust of Mormonism. The old members have generally been re-baptized and a
few new ones have embraced the Truth, but it is an uphill business here, as is the case in every place where the authorities of the Church have been removed, It then becomes kind of a spiritual whirlpool that gathers within its vortex all the filth and scum of apostasy that floats in the wake of the Church. But we are determined, by the help of God, to keep up the organization here...."
Yours respectfully,
L. O. Littlefield
In 1901 William Burdette Folsom, son of William H. Folsom, was seeking the date of his first baptism. He wrote a letter to philander Brown of Provo, Utah, to determine if he had the information. Philander Brown's reply follows:
Provo, June 2, 1901
"Brother Wm. B. Folsom,
We were baptized on the 21st day of May, 1858. Your father baptized us all in Spoon Lake and then we went up to your house and he confirmed us himself. C. R. Savig was Secretary^. I do not know whether^ you was baptized the same time or not. Give my regard to all yours tru1ey.
P. Brown"
Mary Brown Hales of Orem, Utah, daughter of philander Brown, stated that her father had written that letter. She referred to the William H. Folsom family as their intimate friends.
Ralph Graham Savage, son of C. R. Savage, was born in Council Bluffs, and according to T. Edgar Lyon, Harriet Amelia Folsom did some "baby sitting" for some of the families in Council Bluffs.
October 9, 1855, marked the arrival of the sixth child of William H. Folsom and his wife Eliza. Mary Louisa was the name chosen for her. Her features were more rounded than Sister Frances Emily. There was a constant twinkle in her dark eyes as if she knew something nice about you. The two little girls grew to be inseparable companions.
Someone arriving in Council Bluffs with a grand piano decided that it would be impossible for them to transport it across the Plains, so Folsom purchased it and Amelia and Burdette soon received instructions for playing it. They eventually became quite proficient in playing this instrument. The piano was brought across the Plains by the family in 1860. Burdette also played the violin.