Peter FOLGER

Abt 1617 - 1690  (72 years)

• Name	Peter FOLGER
  Birth	Abt Apr 1617	Norwich, Norfolk, England
  Gender	Male
  Reference Number	398
  Reference Number	60
  Reference Number	874
  WWW	https://www.WikiTree.com/wiki/Folger-2
  Death	1690	Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Colony
  Person ID	I425	Gummer
  Last Modified	1 Aug 2024

  
  

  Father	John FOLGER,   b. Abt 1593, Norwich, Norfolk, England d. Abt 1660, Nantucket, Dukes (now Nantucket), Massachusetts (Age 67 years)
  Mother	Meribah GIBBS,   b. Abt 1595, Norwich, Norfolk, England d. Abt 1664, Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Dukes, Massachusetts Bay Colony (Age 69 years)
  Marriage	1609	Norwich, Norfolk, England
  Family ID	F98	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Mary MORRILL,   b. Abt 1619, England d. 1704, Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Colony (Age 85 years)
  Marriage	1644	Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts
  Children	1. Jabez FOLGER,   b. 6 May 1641   d. 18 May 1652 (Age 11 years)   2. Bethiah FOLGER,   b. Abt 1644, Massachusetts d. 6 Jun 1669, off coast of Nantucket & Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (Age 25 years)   3. Joanna FOLGER,   b. 1645, Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Dukes, Massachusetts Bay d. 18 Jul 1719, Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay (Age 74 years)   4. Dorcas FOLGER,   b. Aug 1645, Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts d. Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts   5. Eleazer FOLGER,   b. Abt 1649, Edgartown, Dukes County, Massachusetts. d. Abt 1716, Nantucket, Massachusetts (Age 67 years)   6. Bathsheba FOLGER,   b. Abt 1652, Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Dukes, Massachusetts Bay d. Abt 1726, Salem, Essex, Massachusetts (Age 74 years)   7. John FOLGER,   b. Abt 1659, Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Dukes, Massachusetts Bay Colony d. Abt 23 Aug 1730, Nantucket Island, Nantucket, Massachusetts (Age 71 years) + 8. Patience FOLGER,   b. Abt 1663, Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Dukes, Massachusetts Bay d. Jan 1717, Nantucket, Massachusetts (Age 54 years)   9. Experience FOLGER,   b. Abt 1664, Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Dukes, Massachusetts Bay, Colonial America d. 4 Jun 1739, Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay, Colonial America (Age 75 years)   10. Abiah Lee FOLGER,   b. 15 Aug 1667, Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Colony d. 8 May 1752, Boston, Suffolk, Province of Massachusetts Bay (Age 84 years)
  Family ID	F97	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	1 Aug 2024

  
  

• Photos		Peter Folger tombstone
  		Peter Folger's signature
  		Monument to Founding Fathers of Nantucket
  		Peter Folger has the Quaker Project template but everything in his bio indicates he was first a Puritan and than declared himself a Baptist. Was the template placed in error?

  
  

• Notes

  [[Category:Norwich, Norfolk]] [[Category:Nantucket, Massachusetts]] [[Category: Nantucket Founders and Descendants]] [[Category:Founders Burial Ground, Nantucket, Massachusetts]] {{Puritan Great Migration}} == Biography == Peter Folger (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 widowed father immigrated to Massachusetts. They sailed on the ship ''Abigail''.{{citation needed}}: NOTE: Anderson says only that he arrived by 1638, and names no ship.The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volume 3, by Robert Charles Anderson 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. Mary had to obtain release from the indenture that bound her by the payment of 20 English pounds, a very large sum in those days. It took all Peter Folger had saved in nine years in the New World, plus all that he could borrow from his father, to secure the liberty of Mary. Throughout his life Peter Folger always boasted that the purchase of his Mary's indenture was the best bargain he had ever obtained.https://www.geni.com/people/Peter-Folger/6000000000242503636 The couple had nine children that survived infancy. (See below.) 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. : In a letter dated 1694, it is stated that when Mayhew went to England in 1657 he left his Mission in the hands of Peter Folger.{{citation needed}} In 1659, 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).: His house lot is identified by a fountain erected to the honor of his daughter Abiah, the mother of Benjamin Franklin. It is on the extension of Main Street, nearly two miles west from the Upper Square and bank. 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.{{citation needed}} 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.{{citation needed}} Folger died on Nantucket Island in 1690.[[#VRNM|Vital Records of Nantucket]] 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. === Family === He married Mary Morrill 23 JUN 1642/3 Martha's Vineyard, Dukes Co., Massachusetts, by whom he had the following children:[[#Grover|Grover]] # [[Folger-4|Joanna Folger]] married [[Coleman-36|John Coleman]] # [[Folger-11|Bethia Folger]] married [[Barnard-154|John Barnard]] # [[Folger-23|Dorcas Folger]] married [[Pratt-747|Joseph Pratt]] # [[Folger-26|Eleazer Folger]] married [[Gardner-595|Sarah Gardner]]# [[Folger-62|Bathsheba Folger]] married [[Pope-846|Joseph "John" Pope]] # [[Folger-63|John Folger]] married [[Barnard-585|Mary Barnard]] # [[Folger-5|Experience Folger]] married [[Swain-11|John Swain]]. # [[Folger-65|Patience Folger]] married [[Gardner-593|James Gardner]].# [[Folger-1|Abiah Lee Folger]] married [[Franklin-2|Josiah Franklin]]. == Sources == See also:* The Nantucket Way by Robert F. Mooney and André R Sigourney, publ. 1931*''[[Space:Vital Records of Nantucket, Massachusetts to the Year 1850|Vital Records of Nantucket, Massachusetts to the Year 1850]]'' (NEHGS, Boston, Mass., 1925-1928) P.R. 38: citing "William C. Folger genealogical records in possession of the Nantucket Historical Association." Peter Folger, s. John, "came from the city of Norwich in England in 1638", "Came to Nant. in 1663."::* [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89077229409;view=1up;seq=469 Vol. 1: Births A-F, Page 465-496]: birth of children.::* [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89077229409;view=1up;seq=501 Vol. 1: Births A-F, Page 497]: Peter Folger, h. Mary Morrell, s. John: born ___, 1618 [in England]::* [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89077229441;view=1up;seq=219 Vol. 4: Marriages H-Z, Page 215]: "Morrell (Morrel, Morril), Mary and Peter Folger, s. John: married ___, 1644.::* [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89077229474;view=1up;seq=279 Vol. 5: Deaths, Page 273]: Peter Folger: died ___, 1690.* Grover, Harriet. ''[[Space:Highlights of the Folger Family with a Brief Genealogy|Highlights of the Folger Family with a Brief Genealogy]]'' (Berkeley, California, 1939) [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b29185;view=2up;seq=6 Page 1-8]*''[[Space:Dictionary of National Biography|Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'' (Smith, Elder & Co., 1885-1900)*{{FindAGrave|10904442}} NOTE: No headstone, some sources but may not be reliable*''[[Space:Nantucket Historical Association|Nantucket Historical Association]]'' (Mass., 1898) Vol. 2, No. 1: "Nantucket Lands and Landowners", [https://archive.org/details/bulletinv2n1nant/page/n19 Page 14] * http://www.bakerancestry.org/public/pedigree/792.htm ::* https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/58044861/family ::* https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/20194044/family ::* https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/20194044/family