The Webmaster of this site (Thomas E. Foulks) is a great-grandson of Charles S. Foulks. We have a number of corroborated links to his life and times. Yet, some facts remain quite elusive.

A search of the Columbiana County marriage and census records shows:

Charles S. Foulks married Mary Jane Moore, June 10, 1847. No additional information has been found on this marriage.

Charles S. F(o)ulks married Harriett Johnson, Aug. 8, 1850. Harriett (Hattie) is listed as the wife of Charles S. in his 1895 Indiana obituary. (He had married her "...44 years ago..."). Harriett was the daughter of James and Rebecca (Baxter) Johnson -- one of fourteen children, whose name-birthdate information is elsewhere on these pages.

The 1850 Census of St. Clair Township, taken on Sept. 8, shows the Charles M. F(a)ulks family as:

Charles M., parent, adult, age 52	(birthdate: ca 1798, Pennsylvania)
Sydnie, (Sydney) parent, adult, age 51	(birthdate: ca 1799, Pennsylvania)
Children:
Margaret, age 24	(birthdate: ca 1826, Ohio)
Daniel, age 21	(birthdate: ca 1829, Ohio)
James, age 15	(birthdate: ca 1835, Ohio)
Elizabeth, age 13	(birthdate: ca 1837, Ohio)
Albert, age 7	(birthdate: ca 1843, Ohio)

Charles S. is not shown in this Census record. However, at 29 years old (Jan. 30, 1821), he had married Harriet just one month earlier, a very plausible reason for being missed by the census-taker.

Charles S. Foulks is established as a member of the Charles M. Foulks family by the will of Charles M. (who died April 27, 1872). The will shows his father's full name as Charles Morgan Foulks. It bequeaths Charles S. a tract of Ohio farmland, if he pays $200 to his sister, Elizabeth Jane Carman, within two years of his father's death. (Will probated in Columbiana County, on file at the Lisbon Courthouse.) [Did Elizabeth get her $200?]

A link by the Foulks family to Richland County (Mansfield, Ohio) had been establshed prior to the 1850 Census. Elizabeth Morgan Foulks (widow of Calcutta founder, William Foulks, 1770-1832) died June 5, 1843, in Richland County, with a land bequest to son Charles M. Foulks. (Source: Abstracts of Wills, Richland County, Ohio, 1813-1873, Ohio Genealogical Society.) Whether Charles S. followed other Foulks family members to Richland County is not known; but we have been able to track him to several Ohio locations, prior to his move to Indiana.

In the early 1850s, wife Hattie's parents, James and Rebecca Johnson, had moved from Columbiana County to Indiana, settling on a farm on Allen County's Coverdale Road, adjacent to the Allen-Wells County line in the early 1850s. That move apparently leads to Charles S. eventually becoming a Hoosier.

In his 40s when the Civil War erupted, Charles S. did not fight in the war. His brothers Albert G. and James M. were members of the First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Company I. Instead, Charles tended to farming. We don't know whether he had acquired lands of his own, or was tending crops for his father. The 1860 Census shows him in Gallia County (Gallipolis), Ohio, as a farmer. He traveled elsewhere, as well.

The brothers and their father conducted an active correspondence during the war. A May 15, 1864, letter from Charles Morgan to son James, says Charles is on his way to Meigs County (SE tip of Ohio) "to put in some corn and plant some potatoes." The letter also notes his family will not join him until later in the year. A June 23, 1864, letter from Albert to his father says Charles was in Vinton County (east of Chillicothe).

It's not known why Charles S. chose to move to Indiana, just a few months following his father's death. Hattie's father, James had died in 1859 (Oct. 8), not quite 58 years old. Rebecca Johnson -- who was to live more than 40 years longer -- inherited the Indiana farm. In 1873, Charles acquired a farm just a few miles away, near Sheldon (today, Yoder). Many of Hattie Johnson's siblings also settled in the area.

The search for additional information on Charles S. Foulks continues. No document yet found shows his middle name. Given his father -- Charles Morgan -- carries a middle name of his mother's maiden surname, possibly Charles S. carries a middle name from his mother's first name. His mother, Sydney Herbert, was the daughter of Judge Stewart Herbert (1721-1778), of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Where is his birth record? What happened to the marriage with Mary Jane Moore? Given his inheritances in Ohio, why did he -- in his 50s -- decide to uproot everything, and move to Indiana? Just so Hattie could be near her parents?

In the archives of the Johnson families of Indiana, we have located a photo that may show Charles. The dour image, not atypical of the times, is also befitting of a person whose obituary notice declared him "a man of strict integrity, and sterling worth." But we don't know it is him (at right).

The search for more information on the life and times of Charles S., and his seven children, continues. Are you an Indiana Foulks? You may have the missing pieces of the puzzle....

The motivation for Charley's midlife move to Indiana, leaving behind a community his grandfather William had founded and his father Charles Morgan had nurtured, remains a puzzle. One possible answer is in the fictionalized biography, Charley Foulks: My Life and Times.

Send E-mail to thom@foulks.com