Folger, Peter

Folger, Peter (fōl`jər), 1617–90, British settler on Nantucket. He was associated with Thomas Mayhew on Martha's Vineyard, becoming missionary, schoolmaster, and surveyor. He moved to Nantucket in 1663, added other duties to those he possessed in Martha's Vineyard, and became a leader in the community. Folger was a Baptist and was opposed to the intolerance of the Massachusetts leaders. He wrote A Looking Glass for the Times (1676), which his grandson, Benjamin Franklin, described as a defense of liberty of conscience in "homespun verse—written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom."

Bibliography

See F. M. Anderson, A Grandfather for Benjamin Franklin (1940).