Folsom, Erminia Thompson, 1878-1967

Mariana Thompson (Folsom), born a Pennsylvania Quaker, was a graduate of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. She and her husband, Allan Perez Folsom, were both Unitarian ministers, teachers, and lecturers. By 1879 Mariana was a state lecturer of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, living in Marshalltown, Iowa. The family moved to Texas in 1881 following a lecture tour there; the Folsoms lived variously in San Antonio, Hallettsville, and Refugio County before settling in Austin by 1898. They had at least three children: a son Allison Thompson Folsom (born in Foxboro, Massachusetts, 1875; LL.B., the University of Texas; later Terrell County Attorney); a daughter Erminia Thompson Folsom (born in Oswego, New York, 1878); and another son Clarence Stroud Thompson Folsom (born in 1885; B.A., the University of Texas, 1907; licensed as an attorney, 1919). Mariana Folsom was a leader in the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Texas Equal Rights Association, and a member of the Universal Peace Union and the Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She died sometime before March 26, 1910.

Erminia Thompson Folsom was born in Oswego, New York, on November 6, 1878, the daughter of Allan Perez Folsom and Mariana Thompson Folsom. Her family came to Texas in 1881. After graduating from Austin public schools, Erminia entered the University of Texas by 1900, where she received a B.S. in 1907. She taught school in the Eanes School near Austin (ca. 1903) and also near Fort Stockton. In 1911 she ran one brother's law office for a summer, while both brothers were in California. Most of her career was spent lecturing and writing articles for various reform movements. She was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (she marched in the first suffragette parade in Washington, D.C.), the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, and the Austin Woman Suffrage Association; she was also an official organizer for the Texas League of the College Equal Suffrage League. By 1919 she was on the executive committee (assistant secretary) of the Texas Prison Association, and was acting secretary of the Travis County Prison Association in 1921. In 1928, she campaigned for Herbert Hoover. She was active in the Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union, being a delegate to the state convention in Galveston in 1939 as well as attending many other Woman's Christian Temperance Union conventions, as late as 1957; in 1948, she was an authorized reporter for the Texas White Ribbon, the official publication of the Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Miss Folsom never married, and continued to live in Austin after her brothers' families moved to California. She was admitted to the Allandale Nursing Home and died on December 31, 1967.

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