Tales From The Tree

Angelina Walker

Our Grandmother Was A Bigamist

On May 7, 1917, my grandmother safely crossed the border into Canada at Emerson, Manitoba with $25 dollars on her person. She was listed on the manifest as “Mrs. E.G. Folsom”. It was likely the last time she would go by that name. She had left her American husband in Fairmont, West Virginia and was returning to her previous life in Winnipeg, as a single woman named Lina Walker (Pronounced “LIE-na”). She was the only woman to cross the border that day.

Below: Canadian Immigration Admissions at Emerson Manitoba, May 7, 1917

Years later, she would confess to my mother: “he was an awful beast, he made me do terrible things”. As kids, we always knew George Ingold was her second husband, that she had never divorced Edward Folsom. She always claimed she didn’t know there was any such thing as divorce. We knew that was nonsense: her own sister Lottie had been divorced.

Let’s go back to the beginning ….

On July 3, 1911, 25-year old Angelina Walker married Dr. Edward Folsom in Toronto. He was a native of Chicago and a recent graduate of the Ontario Veterinarian College. The newlyweds made their home in Fairmont, Virginia where he was employed as a horse doctor at Consolidated Coal Company.

There’s nothing unusual in any of that other than only a few weeks earlier, she had been enumerated in the 1911 Canadian Census as living in Winnipeg at the same rooming house as her sister Ella, and another man who hoped to marry her, our grandfather, Walter George Ingold.

Below: entry from 1911 Census of Winnipeg, taken in June of 1911.

We know Lina and George were a couple at this point, because her sister, Lottie Walker Thompson, announced it in the local newspaper.

Winnipeg Tribune, July 25, 1910

Whatever possessed Lina to suddenly abandon George Ingold and run off to Toronto to marry Dr. Folsom?

I have a theory:

In 1910, George Ingold was working as a meat cutter for Wm. Coates Meats. I’m guessing Lina’s siblings, particularly her older brothers in Toronto, didn’t think George was good enough for her.

After all, sister Ella was a nurse, sister Jennie had married a respectable shoe store manager who would eventually own his own shop in Barrie and Lottie married an insurance broker.

Lina herself was a bit of a snob.

Somehow, on a visit to Toronto, she met Dr. Folsom, recent graduate and a member of an elite University of Toronto fraternity. Lina may very well have been manipulated by her 3 Toronto brothers – Hawley was a successful clothier with his own shop, Chauncey was a manufacturer of farm equipment. A third brother, Frank Walker, a grocery wholesaler, would eventually help George buy into his own grocery business in Niagara Falls in 1923.

I really believe the siblings didn’t want Lina to marry a “meat cutter”.

Below: Dr. Folsom’s University of Toronto fraternity credentials likely knocked the Walkers off their feet.

The marriage certificate offers evidence that could support my theory of family influence.

The ceremony took place in York (east of Toronto) where her brother Chauncey Walker resided. One of the witnesses to the marriage is “Bob Walker”, who lives at 420 Brunswick Avenue in Toronto, which just happens to be the the address of Lina’s brother, George Hawley Walker. Hawley’s fifteen-year son old “Bob Walker” must have gotten a kick out of being a witness to a marriage. Also witnessing the marriage is one of Lina’s and George’s Winnipeg room-mates, Annie Mutch. The cuckolding of George Ingold was complete.

We’ll never know exactly what Lina endured during her 6 year rust-belt marriage to Dr. Folsom but it drove her to an act few women of the time considered. According to my father, Frank Ingold, an unhappy Lina consulted her sisters and they urged her to return to Canada. I like to think she left without Folsom knowing.

Folsom was the first to commit bigamy: he married Lillian Baker in 1918, then Evelyn Hamilton in 1924. Both women divorced him on the grounds of “extreme cruelty”. No children came from any of his marriages, so there’s that.

Lillian Folsom divorce – 4 years of marriage

Evelyn Folsom divorce – 5 years of marriage

Recently on a genealogy site, I spoke to a descendant by marriage to Dr. Folsom. He confirmed to me that Folsom had been repeatedly whipped behind the woodshed as a child and he learned to “give what he got”. A brother of his was an angry alcoholic.

Back in Winnipeg, Lina reunited with George Ingold. In January of 1920 they travelled to Hennepin Country, Minnesota where they were married. Presumably they thought a US marriage would throw a smoke-screen over her Canadian marriage. The nuptials were never valid and she risked 5 years in jail if caught. They spent a few years “on the run” in Regina, Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto before settling down in Niagara Falls, Ontario in 1923.

The date below is incorrect. I’ll have to order the certificate for proof. Either that or Lina was 7 months pregnant with Joyce at the time. Seems unlikely.

When I was younger, I judged Lina as squeamish about marriage and there is plenty of evidence of that, but now, with all the information about Folsom and how he treated his subsequent wives, I sympathize with her. She just wanted to be rid of him, and men held all the cards legally.

Dr. Folsom died in 1930. I remember Lina showing us a news clipping about him, which I now possess. I don’t know where she got it, but she kept it all those years. I wonder why…?

Below: Angelina Walker (1886-1977)