Part 1 (2/2)

”This child does not seem likely to die,” said the happy tallow chandler. ”I will go and see the parson, and if he does not object I will give the child to the Lord on this January day, and if he should come to anything he will have occasion to remember that I thought of the highest duty that I owed him when he first opened his eyes to the light.”

The smiling and enthusiastic tallow chandler went to see the parson, and then returned to his home.

”Abiah,” he said to his wife, ”I am going to have the child christened.

What shall his name be?”

Josiah Franklin, the chandler, who had emigrated to Boston town that he might enjoy religious freedom, had left a brother in England, who was an honest, kindly, large-hearted man, and ”a poet.”

”How would Benjamin do?” he continued; ”brother's name. Benjamin is a family name, and a good one. Benjamin of old, into whose sack Joseph put the silver cup, was a right kind of a man. What do you say, Abiah Folger?”

”Benjamin is a good name, and a name lasts for life. But your brother Benjamin has not succeeded very well in his many undertakings.”

”No, but in all his losses he has never lost his good name. His honor has shown over all. 'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver or gold.' A man may get riches and yet be poor. It is he that seeks the welfare of others more than wealth for himself that lives for the things that are best.”

”Josiah, this is no common boy--look at his head. We can not do for him as our neighbors do for their children. But we can give him a name to honor, and that will be an example to him. How would Folger do--Folger Franklin? Father Folger was a poet like your brother Benjamin, and he did well in life. That would unite the names of the two families.”

John Folger, of Norwich, England, with his son Peter, came to this country in the year 1635 on the same s.h.i.+p that bore the family of Rev.

Hugh Peters. This clergyman, who is known as a ”regicide,” or king murderer, and who suffered a most terrible death in London on the accession of Charles II, succeeded Roger Williams in the church at Salem. He flourished during the times of Cromwell, but was sentenced to be hanged, cut down alive, and tortured, his body to be quartered, and his head exposed among the malefactors, on account of having consented to the execution of Charles I.

Among Hugh Peters's household was one Mary Morrell, a white slave, or purchased serving maid. She was a very bright and beautiful girl.

The pa.s.sengers had small comforts on board the s.h.i.+p. The pa.s.sage was a long one, and the time pa.s.sed heavily.

Now the pa.s.sengers who were most interesting to each other became intimate, and young Peter Folger and beautiful Mary Morrell of the Peterses became very interesting to each other and very social. Peter Folger began to ask himself the question, ”If the fair maid would marry me, could I not purchase her freedom?” He seems somehow to have found out that the latter could be done, and so Peter offered himself to the attractive servant of the Peterses. The two were betrothed amid the Atlantic winds and the rolling seas, and the roaring ocean could have little troubled them then, so happy were their antic.i.p.ations 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 ”s.n.a.t.c.h 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, Ma.s.s., 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.signed 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 ent.i.tled A Looking-gla.s.s 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 G.o.d'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.

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