Peleg Folger (abt. 1734 - 1789)

Born about 13 Oct 1734 in Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay

Ancestors

Died 26 May 1789 at about age 54 in Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States

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Biography

Peleg was born on the Island of Nantucket in 1733 or 1734. The son of Eleazar Folger and Mary Marshall, he became "a poet and an eminent man."^[1] He grew up as a farmer, but at seventeen he went to sea and became a whaleman. He was extraordinary in that he kept a journal in which he recorded not only his whaling experiences, but also his philosophical and poetic observations. Accordingly, he has been called a "real-life counterpart to Ishmael" of Moby-Dick.^[2] He made his last recorded voyage in 1760, after which he became a schoolteacher and clerk of the Quaker monthly meeting. He also kept up his journal. He never married, passing away in 1789.

Sources

1. ↑ Vital Records of Nantucket, Vol. 5, Deaths, p. 273.
2. ↑ Philbrick, Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890, Chapter 11.

• Barney Genealogical Record. Nantucket Historical Association. Person ID I21256.
• Philbrick, Nathaniel. Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890. New York: Penguin Books, 2011. Chapter 11 - Peleg Folger, the Poet Whaleman.
• Vital Records of Nantucket, Massachusetts to the Year 1850. Boston, Mass.: The New England Historic Genealogical Society at the charge of the Eddy Town-Record Fund, 1925-1928. Vol. 1, Births, p. 496. Vol. 5, Deaths, p. 273.