Folger immigrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony from Norwich, England in 1635[2] with Rev. Hugh Peters and his family. She was an indentured servant, working for the family as a maid[3][4] on the same ship as Peter Folger and his parents.[2] Peter Folger paid Hugh Peters the sum of 20 pounds to pay off Mary's servitude, which he declared was the best appropriation of money he had ever made.[5][4]
They had nine children, eight of whom were born on Martha's Vineyard.[6] In 1663, they moved to Nantucket,[2] where they were among the few people of European heritage.[3] Their youngest daughter, Abiah (1667–1752) was born there. She married Boston candle-maker Josiah Franklin and they had a son, Benjamin Franklin.[1][7]
Her husband died in 1690,[2] and she died in 1704.[3]
Legacy
Folger was referenced in defense of the whaling industry in Herman Melville's fictional Moby-Dick.[8] In it, Melville sets up a series of objections to that industry, one of which is "No good blood in their veins?" The response is:
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.