Mary Morrill

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Mary Morrill (akas: Morrel/Morrills/Morill) (b. circa 1620 – d. 1704) was the grandmother of Benjamin Franklin, American printer, journalist, publisher, author, philanthropist, abolitionist, public servant, scientist, librarian, diplomat, statesman and inventor.

Mary came to the New World as an indentured servant probably belonging to Hugh Peters. Mary married Peter Folger in 1644. He had been one of the few white men in Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket (as a successor of Thomas Mayhew), and who was a teacher and translator for the Wampanoag Indians. Peter Folger paid Hugh Peters the sum of 20 shillings to pay off Mary's servitude, which he declared was the best appropriation of money he had ever made. Their daughter, Abiah Folger (Benjamin Franklin's mother,) was born on August 15, 1667 in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Mary was mentioned by name as a historical figure in Herman Melville's fictional Moby Dick in chapter 24 which is entitled The Advocate. This chapter is a defense of Nantucket's whaling industry. In it, Melville sets up a series of objections to that industry, one of which is "No good blood in their veins?" His response to this objection is:

"They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel [sic]; 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."

[edit] Other notable descendants

Ezra Cornell, Co-Founder of Cornell University
James Athearn Folger, Founder of Folger's Coffee
Henry Clay Folger, Founded the Folger Shakespeare Library with his wife
Mayhew Folger, Captain of the sealing ship Topaz that rediscovered the Pitcairn Islands in 1808
Rev. Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, Author, Poet, Suffragist, Editor, First female minister in New England
Maria Mitchell, Astronomer
Lucretia Coffin Mott, Feminist