Mary Morrell Folger

Mary Folger (née Morrell (Morrel/Morrill/Morrills/Morill); c. 1620–1704) was the maternal grandmother of Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father of the United States.^[1] In Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, she was cited as an ancestor of the Folger whalers.

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]

She married Peter Folger in 1644.^[3] They lived in Watertown, Massachusetts before moving in 1660 to Martha's Vineyard, where he was acquainted with the Mayhews. He was a strict teacher, surveyor, and translator for the Wampanoag people.^[2]

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]

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.

— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick^[8]