Charles J. Folger
American politician (1818-1884)
Charles James Folger (April 16, 1818 – September 4, 1884) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he was a State Senator in New York from 1862 to 1869 and served as the 34th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from November 14, 1881 until his death in 1884. Folger was the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 1882, but was defeated by the Democratic Party's nominee, future President Grover Cleveland.
Early life
He was born in 1818 on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. When Folger was 12 years old his family moved to Geneva, New York. He later attended Geneva College (now called Hobart and William Smith Colleges), where in 1836 he graduated with honors. After his graduation, he read law with Mark H. Sibley and Alvah Worden in Canandaigua, New York and was admitted to the bar of New York state three years later in 1839. He began his practice in Lyons, New York, but returned to Geneva in 1840, where he remained for the rest of his life. On June 18, 1844, he married Susan Rebecca Worth.
Public life
In 1844, Folger was appointed to the bench of the Ontario County Court of Common Pleas, serving for about a year.
“Charles J. Folger” enters the record as american politician (1818-1884). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Folger and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1065003. VIAF identifies the subject as 76151606. The Library of Congress control number is nr00002849. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1818, 1884, 1862 and 1869.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles J. Folger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.