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Although William (Fullington) Folsom and his sister were entirely too young for the responsibilities which now fell on their shoulders, they accepted their new assignments without complaint. At first mother Agnes found some employment in the community; but as soon as William was old enough, the supervisors of the sawmills made work for him. From then on he was schooled in every phase of handling and treating lumber at the lumber mill and the remodeling and replacing of the wharfs and docks. He graciously shared his earnings with the family. He also became acquainted with most of the families in the vicinity of Holderness and the towns bordering on Lake Squam and Lake Winnipesaukee. The quays and wharves of Lake Squam form the southern border of the town of Holderness. Around the corner and to the north of Holderness lies the town of Sandwich, New Hampshire. At the northwest entrance to this town, one finds an intersection of the highways known as Skinners Corners.
The charter for Sandwich, Carroll County, New Hampshire, was granted October 25, 1763. It was the outgrowth of a small town formed at Squam Lake where Gilman and Beede conducted large lumbering operations. Captain Nathaniel Folsom and Samuel Folsom were commissioned to layout the town. When the county road was opened from Thornton through Sandwich in 1801, the farmers from Vermont' used this road to convey their products to Portland, Maine. It was about this time that Jedediah Skinner, his wife Sarah and six children arrived from Vermont to make their home in Sandwich.
Jedediah was a descendant of Thomas Skinner of Colchester, Connecticut, and his wife, Mary Pratt, a daughter of Richard Pratt of Charleston, Massachusetts, and granddaughter of John Pratt of Malden, England. About 1753 Jedediah's parents, Joseph and Ruth Strong Skinner had come up the Connecticut River from Hebron, Connecticut, on the ice and snow to help make a settlement at Lyme, New Hampshire. Here they became members of the Congregational Church in 1773, and Joseph was soon installed as Presiding Elder. Four of Jedediah and Sarah's children were born in Lyme. They then thought to better their financial condition by moving to Washington, Orange County, Vermont, where two more children were added to the family, and then they moved to Sandwich, New Hampshire. Here at Sandwich Jedediah built a large substantial home, very comfortable by early standards, with neatly arranged and well-constructed barns and outbuildings. He was not only a good carpenter, but he also possessed a mechanical mind. He served as the community music teacher at a time when a pitch pipe and tuning fork were the only means of locating pitch for singing. Perhaps you can get a better picture of him from the following story:
Unless one saw Jedediah Ingersoll Skinner, one would not understand the meaning of "raw boned". Now in the prime of life, he reclined in the old, handmade, wooden rocker with its rumpled, cushioned, padded back. His legs seemed to extend endlessly toward the hearth in his home at Sandwich, New Hampshire. The hard manual labor of his early life had rounded out his broad shoulders with firm sinewy muscles, but at this period of life no part of him seemed to belong to another. Kindly, intelligent eyes spoke from a well-sculptured face. Only his hands told of undeveloped latent talents which might have brought forth some invention of worth for the benefit of mankind had the opportunity presented itself. This quality of mind he passed on to his children and grandchildren. Around his neck hung a talisman. It was no golden cross, nor piece of jade; only a memory which concerned his name.