Benjamin Franklin Folger (1777–1859)

Siasconset resident Benjamin Franklin Folger was a big attraction for visitors in his day. Remarkable for his knowledge of island history and genealogy, he is described as “a walking record of almost everything that ever happened on the island from the first landing of the whites down to his own boyhood. ”Novelist Joseph C. Hart lent an ear to the old man, whom he credits with telling him the story of Kezia Coffin, fictionalized in Hart’s 1832 novel Miriam Coffin, or the Whale Fishermen. Another visitor to ’Sconset, Henry David Thoreau, remembered him in his journal: “[A] singular old hermit and genealogist, over seventy years old, who, for thirty years at least, has lived alone and devoted his thoughts to genealogy. He knows the genealogy of the whole island, and a relative supports him by making genealogical charts from his dictation for those who will pay for them.” Thoreau added that Folger “lives in a very filthy manner, and G. helped clean his house [Nonantum] when he was absent about two years ago. They took up three barrels of dirt in his room. ”Folger was reluctant to commit his vast genealogical knowledge to paper as he shunned the use of a pen. Luckily for posterity, he shared his precious remaining papers and a great deal of his genealogical information with Eliza Starbuck Barney and others. They form the basis of the Barney Genealogical Record.

Benjamin Franklin Folger's gravestone, in the Quaker Cemetery

Read more about Benjamin Franklin Folger in "'A Walking Genealogical Tree': Benjamin Franklin Folger, Nantucket's First Genealogist," by
by Nathaniel Philbrick

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association