Obituary

Augustus E. “Whale Oil Gus” Folger

Augustus Eliot Folger is finally going to rest beside his parents in Prospect Hill Cemetery eighty-two years after his death in Los Angeles in 1939. He was born on February 10, 1852, to whaling Captain Henry B. Folger and Sarah (Swain) Folger at home at the corner of Bloom Street and Main Street. At age 15 he left the Coffin School to join two boys from another Nantucket whaling family—Andrew B. Coon, age 15, son of Captain Charles A. Coon, and his cousin Charles W. Coon, age 17—to sign on the whaling bark Mount Wollaston departing New Bedford for the Pacific in 1867 under Nantucket Captain Edward B. Coffin. When the Mount Wollaston returned to port four years later, Augustus shipped out on the Draco on a three-year Atlantic voyage, followed by a two-year voyage on the Callao to the Indian Ocean.
Between voyages, in the fall of 1871, Augustus busked in town and in ‘Sconset, singing “sentimental and comic songs” outdoors for enthusiastic audiences. Later he put his powerful voice to work as an auctioneer and occasional town crier. In the early 1880s, he went on stage in Austin and Stone’s Dime Museum in Boston’s Scollay Square before signing in 1889 with the Nickelodeon as “Whale Oil Gus” to follow the lecture circuit telling anecdotes about his whaling career. In announcing his prospective weekly salary, he remarked by comparison that upon completion of his whaling voyage on the Mount Wollaston he was $65 in debt. Throughout the 1890s and into the first decade of the twentieth century Whale Oil Gus was a celebrity with frequent local and national media coverage. He even had a soap named for him. He amassed a large collection of whaling implements that he exhibited at his public appearances, and eventually, as a lecturer for the California-based Pacific Whaling Company, he toured the country with an embalmed finback whale. In 1916, he was back on the east coast to visit his daughter in Roxbury and, after an absence of two decades, to visit Nantucket. During World War I he was a Y.M.C.A. entertainer at army camps and military hospitals, and in 1920 he delivered a lecture to Pomona, California, high school students. As reported in the Pomona Bulletin, he styled himself “Captain,” claiming to have gone whaling at age eleven and to have spent thirty years at sea. By this time, he was touring the country in a Ford fitted out as a camper. In 1922 the Pasadena News reported that he had been there with his collection of whaling artifacts. Ten years later, at age 80, he wrote to the Inquirer and Mirror from Oakland that he was “still on deck” and carrying on with his lectures. On his 87th birthday in February 1939, he lectured to students at Hamilton Junior High School in Long Beach. We are honored to be a part of the long delayed burial of "Whale Oil Gus." We'll perform a song he was known to sing on the streets of Nantucket, "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep." Here's his obituary: On September 30, 1939, the Inquirer and Mirror reported that Augustus E. Folger had “dropped anchor at the end of life’s voyage” in Los Angeles, where his funeral had been held on September 19. According to editor/publisher Harry B. Turner, who had met him many years earlier, “Whale Oil Gus wanted to be buried beside his parents in Nantucket.” In November, a box arrived addressed to Turner containing the “cremated remains of Augustus E. Folger.” Turner turned the box over to the Lewis Funeral Home and reported confidently that “all that is mortal of Capt. Augustus E. Folger has been laid to rest beside those of his parents.” Turner hoped that a monument might be placed there simply inscribed with “Whale Oil Gus.” This was not what had happened. Instead, the box labeled with the name Augustus E. Folger remained on a shelf at the Lewis establishment until it closed. Then the box was turned over to the Town Clerk, and it has been on a shelf in the vault in the Town Building until now. How did this happen? Turner had mistakenly given the parents’ names as Joseph B. Folger and Sarah C. Folger. No burial plot could be found with these names, and no interment took place. Augustus E. Folger was predeceased by his wife, Hattie (West) Folger of New Bedford and survived by his daughter Sarah (Folger) McKellar and three grandchildren. He was also survived by his partner of many years, LeClair Harris, whose stage persona was “Mate Monday.” The burial place of Captain Henry B. Folger and his wife Sarah has been located in Prospect Hill Cemetery, and the long-delayed burial will take place on October 17 at 1:30 in Prospect Hill Cemetery. The public is welcome.