Benjamin Franklin

Notes:

On the new-style calendar his birth date is 17 January.

Notes:

He was by trade a dyer, but for lack of custom he became a soap-boiler and a tallow-chandler. He ridiculed his son Benjamin for writing poetry, saying (as reported by Benjamin) "Verse makers were generally beggars."

Josiah Franklin's son Benjamin on his father:

He had an excellent constitution, was of middle size, but well made and strong, and extremely active in whatever he undertook. He designed with a degree of neatness, and knew a little music.

He had sound judgment, and upon public and private matters his advice was sought by the leading men in Boston.

Josiah married Abiah Folger on 25 Nov 1689 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts. Abiah (daughter of Peter Folger and Mary Morrill) was born on 15 Aug 1667 in Nantucket, New York; died on 8 May 1752 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts; was buried in Granary Burying Ground, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

A farmer and blacksmith.

Thomas married Jane White about Nov 1635 in Harbury, Warwickshire, England. Jane (daughter of George White and Priscilla Bromley) was born before 30 Nov 1617; was christened on 30 Nov 1617 in Grendon, Northamptonshire, England; died before 30 Oct 1662; was buried on 30 Oct 1662 in Ecton, Northamptonshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Aug 1617, Norwich, Norfolk, England
• Alternate death: Apr 1690, Nantucket, New York

Notes:

Maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin; also an ancestor of J. A. Folger (1835-1889), founder of the Folgers coffee company.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Folger, Peter (1617–1690), interpreter and public official in America, was born in Norwich, the son of John Folger and Meriba Gibbs. Little is known of Folger until 1635, when he and his widower* father moved to Massachusetts. During the voyage Folger met Mary Morrill, an indentured servant, and apparently fell in love for he spent the next nine years of his life working as a weaver, miller, surveyor, and shoemaker to raise the £20 to buy out her contract and marry her in 1644. The couple had nine children that survived infancy. During the 1640s the family moved to Martha's Vineyard, an island settlement that was effectively ruled by the senior and junior Thomas Mayhew. There Folger began a long and prosperous career as an interpreter and cultural intermediary with the American Indian population. At the Mayhews' puritan mission he evangelized the native inhabitants and mastered Algonquian, a major Amerindian language family that would have enabled communication with the vast majority of American Indians in New England. About 1648 the younger Thomas Mayhew extended the mission to nearby Nantucket Island, part of the Mayhew proprietorship, which was home to several thousand American Indians. In 1659 Folger, who was by then familiar with the island through his missionary work, aided a group of white settlers who had purchased the island from the younger Thomas Mayhew in surveying Nantucket. That same year Folger also publicly declared himself a Baptist at a Martha's Vineyard town meeting, which undoubtedly agitated the puritan Mayhews and prompted Folger to move to the more tolerant colony of Rhode Island.

In 1663 Folger returned to Nantucket at the request of the island's proprietors in order to soothe worsening tensions with the native population that had arisen mainly from the interference of the white settlement's cattle with Amerindian crops. As an enticement he was awarded a half share in the proprietorship (full shares were reserved for families of original white settlers). Nantucket was something of an anomaly in the puritan New England context in that established religion did not gain a substantial foothold among the whites until the eighteenth century. The only churches on the island in Folger's time, therefore, were found among the American Indians. In such tolerance Folger comfortably settled his family, acted as an intermediary with the American Indians, and continued his highly successful evangelizing efforts. He also worked as a teacher, surveyor, miller, and farmer, and even served as the clerk of courts.

Folger's greatest triumph as chief diplomat to the American Indians came in 1665, when Metacom ‘King Philip’, arrived with a number of his warriors in pursuit of John Gibbs. Gibbs, an Amerindian from Nantucket who had recently finished his studies at Harvard, had insulted the powerful Pokanoket sachem by publicly speaking his father's name, Massasoit, which was an offence punishable by death. Gibbs was most likely a close friend of Folger, who had baptized the American Indian and given him the Christian name John Gibbs, which was the name of Folger's maternal grandfather. Neither the Amerindian nor the white population (about 100 people) was in a position to thwart Metacom through force, but Folger intervened to save Gibbs, offering his pursuer a ransom in exchange for Gibbs's life. Metacom agreed, but the people of Nantucket were only able to raise £11—significantly less than he wanted. An angry Metacom threatened to destroy the settlement, but the islanders called his bluff, threatening to attack him unless he departed, which he promptly did. A decade later Metacom led a coalition of Amerindians against New England in what became known as King Philip's War. The brutal fighting saw extensive slaughter and murder on both sides, but did not touch Nantucket.

Folger died on Nantucket Island in 1690. He was survived by a substantial family that would produce a number of prominent American scientists, merchants, and politicians, the most famous of whom was Benjamin Franklin, Folger's grandson.

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* Editorial footnote: The Oxford DNB notwithstanding, John Folger was not a widower in 1635; he married Merrable Gibbs in England no later than 25 Jan 1609 and she outlived him on Martha's Vineyard by at least four years. For further particulars see the note on the marriage of John Folger to Merrable Gibbs.

Peter married Mary Morrill in 1644 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Mary died in 1704 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

From Moby-Dick, chapter 24:

But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.

The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.

The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!

True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins.

No good blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble Benjamin--this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.

Henry married Agnes Jones on 30 Oct 1595 in Ecton, Northamptonshire, England. Agnes (daughter of William Jones and Margaret) was born before 22 Nov 1573; was christened on 22 Nov 1573 in Ecton, Northamptonshire, England; died before 29 Jan 1646; was buried on 29 Jan 1646 in Ecton, Northamptonshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also spelled Joanes and other variants. Michael J. Leclerc (citation details below) established that she was not, as long thought, named James.

George married Priscilla Bromley on 15 Sep 1607 in Grendon, Northamptonshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Or Brimley.

Notes:

Said to have come with his wife and son in 1635.

John married Merrable Gibbs before 25 Jan 1609. Merrable (daughter of John Gibbs and Frances Robertson) died after 1663 in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 1663, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

Notes:

Some confusion has transpired over whether Merrable Gibbs was the mother of Peter Folger. In his 1862 NEHGR article "The Folger Family," William Coleman Folger wrote "John Folger died about 1660. Meribell Folger his widow was living in 1664. Her surname is supposed to have been Gibbs. According to tradition, John was a widower when he came over [in 1635]; if this be correct, he must have married her after his arrival in America."

But Benjamin Franklin was certainly aware that Merrable Gibbs was the mother of his grandfather Peter Folger. In 1759, M. Foulger of Illington, Norfolk wrote to Franklin that "John Foulger married to Mirriba Gibbs in Old England by hir he had one sone named Peter and one Daughter than married a Pain on Long Island." And in 1932 George Andrews Moriarty discovered and published the will of "John Gibbes of Frendes in the County of Norff[olk] yeoman," dated 25 Jan 1609, which included a bequest to his daughter "Merrable Folser." So the "tradition" that John Folger emigrated as a widower would appear to have been incorrect; he was certainly married to Merrable Gibbs before 25 Jan 1609, and she certainly outlived him by four years and died on Martha's Vineyard in or after 1664.