ns of their
life in the New World.

Peter purchased Mary's freedom of the Peterses, and so he bought the
grandmother of that Benjamin Franklin who was to "snatch the
thunderbolts from heaven and the scepter from tyrants," to sign the
Declaration of Independence which brought forth a new order of
government for mankind, and to form a treaty of peace with England which
was to make America free.

Peter Folger and his bride first settled in Watertown, Mass., where the
young immigrant became a very useful citizen. He studied the Indian
tongue.

About 1660 the family removed to Martha's Vineyard with Thomas Mayhew,
of colonial fame, where Peter was employed as a school teacher and a
land surveyor, and he assisted Mr. Mayhew in his work among the Indians.
He went to Nantucket as a surveyor about 1662, and was induced to remove
there as an interpreter and as land surveyor. He was assigned by the
proprietors a place known as Roger's Field, and later as Jethro Folger's
Lane, now a portion of the Maddequet Road. Their tenth child was Abiah,
born August 15, 1667. She was the second wife of Josiah Franklin, tallow
chandler, of the sign of the Blue Ball, Boston, and the mother of the
boy whom she would like to have inherit so inspiring a name.

Peter Folger, the Quaker poet of the island of Nantucket, was a most
worthy man. He lived at the beginning of the dark times of persecution,
when Baptists and Quakers were in danger of being publicly whipped,
branded, and deported or banished into the wilderness. Stories of the
cruelty that followed these people filled the colonies, and caused the
Quaker's heart to bleed and burn. He wrote a poem entitled A
Looking-glass for the Times, in which he called upon New England to
pause in her sins of intoleration and persecution, and threatened the
judgments foretold in the Bible upon those who do injustice to God's
children.

"Abiah," said the proud father, "I admire the character of your father.
It stood for justice and human rights. But, wife, listen:

"Brother Benjamin has lost all of his ten children but one. I pity him.
Wife, listen: Brother Benjamin is poor through no fault of his, but
because he gave himself and all that he was to his family.

"Listen: It would touch his heart to learn that I had named this boy for
him. It would show the old man that I had not forgotten him, but still
thought of him.

"I can not do much for the boy, but I can give Brother Benjamin a home
with me,