W. W. Folsom

Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas: Comprising a Condensed History of the State, a Number of Biographies of Distinguished Citizens of the Same, a Brief Descriptive History of Each of the Counties; Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1890; 820 pages. Transcribed and contributed by Gary Telford.
W. W. Folsom, who has been editor of the Woodruff County Vidette for the past ten years, was born in Charlotte, N. C. , on August 23, 1836. At the age of twelve years he entered the office of the Columbia (Tennessee) Record, where he served a time in the printing business. Leaving Columbia in the year 1860, he became a citizen of Jackson, Tennessee, from which point he went into the Southern army, in the Sixth Tennessee Infantry, and served to the close of the war in Gen. Cheatham's division. At the close of the war he came home like many others, penniless, but went to work to build up his own and the fortunes of his bright Southland, as a citizen of Mississippi, engaging in a mercantile and farming life. In 1875 he became a citizen of Arkansas, and since that time he has been laboring to build up every interest of his adopted state.

In 1879 he became the editor of the Brinkley Times, the office of which was burned in November of that year when he became the editor and proprietor of the Vidette. In that capacity he has given his every energy to the advancement of the state, and particularly to the pushing forward of Woodruff County, and by his untiring energy and perseverance has succeeded in giving prominence to his paper, among his brethren of the press, both in and out of the state. In 1888 he was made president of his State Press Association, and is now serving his second term as a member of the executive committee of the National Editorial Association. He is still devoting himself to the advancement and development of Woodruff County and will take pleasure in giving information to any person wishing to know the advantages of this beautiful and fertile region.