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Abiah Folger Franklin (August 15, 1667 – May 18, 1752) was the mother of
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
, a
Founding Father of the United States The Founding Fathers of the United States, often simply referred to as the Founding Fathers or the Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American Revolution, American revolutionary leaders who United Colonies, united the Thirteen Colon ...
.


Biography

Abiah Folger was born on Madaket Road in
Nantucket Nantucket () is an island in the state of Massachusetts in the United States, about south of the Cape Cod peninsula. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck Island, Tuckernuck and Muskeget Island, Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and Co ...
,
Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrell Folger, a former
indentured servant Indentured servitude is a form of Work (human activity), labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as paymen ...
. Her father, Peter Folger, was descended from reformist Flemish Protestants who had fled to England in the sixteenth century and been among the first to flee to
Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
for
religious freedom Freedom of religion or religious liberty, also known as freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice ...
in 1635, when
King Charles I of England Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after h ...
began persecuting Puritans. Later, Peter became a convert to Baptist Christianity, and Abiah was raised as a Baptist. Abiah was the youngest of Peter and Mary Folger's ten children. At age 21 and unmarried, Abiah moved from Nantucket to Boston to live with an older sister and her husband, who were members of the Puritan South Church. Folger married Boston candle-maker and widower Josiah Franklin and they had 10 children. She raised her children with the
Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...
religious tradition. Abiah and Josiah's children included John (born 1690), Peter (1692), Mary (1694), James (1696), Sarah (1699), Ebenezer (1701), a son who died young (1703), Benjamin (1706), Lydia (1708), and Jane (1712). Abiah was an early supporter of her son Benjamin's career but not actively involved in politics. She disapproved of her son's membership in
Freemasonry Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...
. Benjamin Franklin described his mother as “a discreet and virtuous woman” with “an excellent constitution."


Influence on Benjamin

Historian Nick Bunker has described Abiah's influence on her son Benjamin. Bunker reports that "it was his mother who educated his feelings. By the time enjaminwas born, Abiah Franklin had raised so many children that she knew what she was doing when she had another... we cannot give a full account of the way she raised the boy, but we can at least be confident of this. It appears she did everything a parent should, giving him the right combination of attachment and liberty, now and then a touch of discipline, but mostly the time and the space for him to play creatively," and that "this is more or less what Franklin said himself, on the few occasions when he is known to have shared any secrets of their relationship." In his later years, Franklin gave two accounts of his childhood: a very brief account in his autobiography and a less famous but richer account to a French medical student, Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, whom he had befriended in 1779. Apparently Franklin "trusted the young French biologist ndbared his soul to Cabanis, as he did to almost no one else. After their meetings in Paris, the Frenchman came away convinced that Abiah was the principal source of the virtues that her son displayed," writing, "It seems that his mother was a woman full of wisdom." One story told to Cabanis, Bunker reports, summed up her qualities especially well: As a child of about six years, Benjamin had been supplied by his parents with quite a few pennies for his visit to a fair in Boston. There, he handed over all his coins to buy a whistle that made a wonderful noise. Arriving home, Benjamin ran about the house blowing the whistle, and


Portrait in Benjamin's autobiography

The description of Abiah in Benjamin Franklin's ''
Autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...
'' is very brief — only two sentences — and has been the focus of recent scholarship. Matthew Garrett wrote that "the ''Autobiography'' is perhaps the finest example within the modern narrative tradition of a text that habitually compresses major characters - those, that is, who play integral and significant roles within the plot - into minor players. Throughout the ''Autobiography'', Franklin produces this narrative in order to produce ''himself''.... But even by the standards Franklin sets in the rest of the ''Autobiography'', his mother's diminution within the narrative discourse is extreme." He concludes that "Abiah's depiction corresponds to a repertoire of socially normative behavior, the nurturing role of mothers, that cannot be assimilated to Benjamin Franklin's representation of individual incentive in nearly every other sentence of his narrative.... she countenances no excuses for the narrative into which her two sentences arrive like a message from another world."


Relations

Folger's sister Bethshua Folger Pope was an active and theatric participant in the events surrounding the
Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in Province of Massachusetts Bay, colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Not everyone wh ...
. Bethshua suffered "hysterical blindness" and convulsions, and in the middle of one trial, she threw a shoe at an accused person’s head. Her accusations contributed to the death sentence of at least one convicted witch, Martha Corey. As a result, some popular dramatizations of the Salem trials have included Abiah as a character.


Legacy

In 1898, the
Daughters of the American Revolution The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (often abbreviated as DAR or NSDAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a patriot of the American Revolutionary War. A non-p ...
established the Abiah Folger Franklin Chapter in Nantucket. There is a monument with flowers growing in it to honor Folger on the right side of Madaket Road at the site of the Folger Farm, now owned by the Nantucket Historical Association.


Media portrayals

A fictionalized version of Abiah appeared in the fourth episode of '' Voyagers!,'' titled "Agents of Satan," where the central characters prevented her from being hanged during the Salem witch trials. Abiah was portrayed in a 2018 episode of the TV series '' Timeless.'' The episode was titled "The Salem Witch Hunt."


References


Further reading

* (letter from Abiah Franklin to her son Benjamin Franklin) * *


External links


Portrait of Abiah Folger Franklin
and its background, a
benfranklin300.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Folger, Abiah 1667 births 1752 deaths Benjamin Franklin People from Nantucket, Massachusetts People from colonial Massachusetts Burials at Granary Burying Ground