Obama's Selections

Lately I've been seeing that some people, mostly Democrats, are taking shots at President Obama's recent selections for various positions that are coming open. The complaints have to do with diversity.

The one I see the most of in the news Charles Rangel, a liberal democratic congressman from New York who said that lack of diversity is "as embarrassing as hell." 

I thought this is what we as Americans were supposed to be getting away from, i.e. choosing people based on irrelevant factors such as gender and ethnic background and focusing instead on the ability to do the job. If Rangel was going in the hospital for a serious procedure (and by the way, government is a serious matter), wouldn't he want the most medically qualified doctors to work on him and not the most diverse?

To me, merit trumps diversity every time. 

Folger/Starbucks Coffee Connection

While reading a book on Benjamin Franklin, I learned that his mother's maiden name was Abiah Folger who was born on Nantucket Island in 1667. I have been tracing my genealogical roots for some time and the name Folger rang a bell. I looked at my database and sure enough, I had one person named Folger in my family tree. Her name was Dorcas Folger who married an ninth great uncle of mine. However, I also noticed she was born on Martha's Vineyard in 1647. Hmmm, same time frame, same geographical area. Some quick internet research revealed that Dorcas was Abiah's older sister. (As an aside to my story, this kind of a "find" is one of the thrills of doing genealogy and why so many people do it.)

More research (because I'm interested now) reveals the following:

Folger was a prominent family name on Nantucket from the earliest days of European settlement. One of the Folger descendants was J. A. Folger, born on Nantucket in 1835 and founder of the Folger Coffee Company in San Francisco.

OK, that's that. So, while looking into the background of the Folger's on Nantucket. What name do I run across? Starbuck. Avast matey. The Starbucks were another big name in early Nantucket and later in that island's whaling industry. (I know you see where this is going.) In fact, I was able to find one instance of a marriage between these two families and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more.

So, more research. Starbucks Coffee Company was founded in Seattle in 1971.  The name was inspired by Starbuck, the chief mate of the Pequod, the whaling ship in the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In the book, Starbuck is characterized as a Nantucket Quaker, as were the real Starbucks. Melville had deep New England roots, so when he named one of his characters "Starbuck" who was on a whaling ship out of Nantucket, it wasn't a name he just picked out of the air.

So there you have it. Two 17th century colonial families from Nantucket end up directly in one case  and indirectly in the other putting their names on coffee products of today.