Note: Peter Folger was the only child of John Folger, 1590-1660, and Meribah Gibbs. John and Peter came from Norwich, Norfolk Co, England to Watertown, MA in 1635. In 1636 Peter went to Martha's Vinyard with Thomas Mayhew. He worked very hard in teaching the Indians as a successor to Mayhew. He also was one of the few settlers who worked equally hard at learning the Wampanoag language. In 1663 he went to Nantucket to interpret for Tristram Coffin with the Indians. He was invited to move with his family to Nantucket, to officiate as miller, weaver, and interpreter of the Indian language; his son, Eleazer, to act as shoemaker, and as a proper encouragement to these several occupations, a grant of one-half share of land, with all the accommodations thereunto belonging, was made to the father. Besides laboring in the calling above mentioned, he acted as surveyor of land. We also read in records of the Folger family, that "he taught school and surveyed land at Martha's Vineyard, and also assisted in the work of Christianizing the native Indians." "Peter married Mary Morrill in 1644, having bought her of Hugh Peters, to whom she owed service, and paid the sum of 20 pounds which he very gallantly declared was the best appropriation of money he had ever made."* Shortly after Peter Folger's move to Nantucket, his daughter Abiah was born, who was the only child of Peter Folger born on the Island. She afterwards became the second wife of Josiah Franklin of Boston, and was the mother of Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin is a 1st cousin, 9 times removed.

References: *The History of Nantucket, County, Island, and Town, Including Genealogies of First Settlers, by Alexander Starbuck; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary; Virkus, Immigrant Ancestors; Vital Records of Nantucket, MA to the year 1850, v.1, birhts (A-F) New England Marriages Prior to 1700 by Torrey

In a small volume titled "The Story of Old Nantucket" originally printed in 1915 and revised in 1928, the author, William F. Macy states that: "In the interim between the two editions of my little book the first real history of Nantucket has appeared. This volume of nearly nine hundred octavo pages represents what was practically the life work, as an absorbing avocation, of the late Alexander Starbuck, than whom no greater authority on all that concerns the island's past ever lived or probably ever will live. To this monumental and well nigh exhaustive work the inquiring reader is referred for facts and information only obtainable elsewhere, if at all, at the cost of endless research."