Thomas Walser

  Notes:

A note on the Walsers:
The English Moravian Website in West Salem states that it was a man named
Walser (no first name given) who ventured west to the Southern Illinois border with Indiana (around 1830 (give or take 5 years) and returned to Salem NC with news of a wonderful country.
His fellow English Moravians (followers of the Englishman Wycliffe and the
Czech-Bohemian Jan Huis) packed their wagons and headed west.
They loved the area and petitioned the state government to have the village named "New Salem". They were disappointed to find that the name was already taken by a village near Springfield (soon to be the home of the Young Abraham Lincoln). They decided on West Salem since they had traveled west from Salem NC. The irony is that their village is due east of Salem, IL, the birthplace in 1860 of William Jennings Bryan. ¹

Thomas married.