The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Folger, Peter
(fl´jr), 161790, British settler on Nantucket. He was associated with Thomas Mayhew on Marthas Vineyard, becoming missionary, schoolmaster, and surveyor. He moved to Nantucket in 1663, added other duties to those he possessed in Marthas Vineyard, and became a leader in the community. Folger was a Baptist and was opposed to the intolerance of the Massachusetts leaders. He wrote A Looking Glass for the Times (1676), which his grandson, Benjamin Franklin, described as a defense of liberty of conscience in homespun versewritten with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom.