Joseph Libbey Folsom

Joseph Libbey Folsom (May 19, 1817 – July 19, 1855) was an American real estate investor, and military personnel in the early days of California's statehood.

Folsom's controversial purchase of Rancho Río de los Americanos land grant from the heirs of a San Francisco merchant William Alexander Leidesdorff remained tied up in litigation for many years, eventually reaching the Supreme Court of California after Folsom's death.

Descendants of a family that first arrived at Hingham, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and subsequently moved on to Exeter, New Hampshire, Abraham Folsom and his wife lived in a home near the northwest corner of Lake Winnipesaukee.

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.

Folsom received orders from General Stephen W. Kearny to inspect San Francisco Bay to select an area for the Army's Military Depot.

He died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight of renal failure while visiting friends at Mission San José (now Fremont, California) on Thursday, July 19, 1855.