Not many American schoolchildren know where Benjamin Franklin came from geographically. Born in Boston, he lived 33 of his final 35 years in Europe. But underlying all of this is a secret to his past: Franklin was born with Flemish DNA.

Like many of the 17th-century transplants to the English colonies in North America, Franklin’s Flemish ancestors came from England’s second largest city, Norwich, in East Anglia. This is the region of England closest to the North Sea and an historic hotbed of religious dissent. It is also the place where thousands of Flemish Protestant weavers settled after fleeing the persecution of the Spanish Duke of Alva in the late 1560s.

At the same time, economic depression hit East Anglia – partly because of social unrest in Flanders and partly because Spanish wool was replacing English as a preferred raw material. In addition, the Flemish in the “Iepers Kwartier”, as the revolutionary area around Ypres was known, had created more technologically advanced weaving skills that offered lighter clothing suitable for summer – more attractive than the scratchy old woollens Norwich’s weavers produced.

The town authorities in Norwich were eager to reverse this decline and sought out the aid of the “Dutch Church” in London. In 1565, 24 Flemish and six Walloon master craftsmen were allowed to relocate under favourable conditions to Norwich. Franklin’s ancestors were among these religious refugees. While the details of their arrival in Norwich are uncertain, Jan Folger and his future wife, Elisabeth, were both born there. Their son, John, born in 1593, and grandson Peter were also born in Norwich and both listed their profession as weavers (a mostly hereditary profession).

But although the English authorities welcomed these immigrants with their highly sought-after skills, they did not make the Strangers, as they were called, feel at home. Nevertheless, the Stranger population steadily grew in Norwich, from 300 in 1565 to 3,900 by 1571.

When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, the sentiment towards and treatment of the Strangers worsened. Some fled back across the North Sea, but others saw a better life awaiting in the New World. In 1635, John Folger and other family members boarded the ship ‘Abigail’ for New England. They were part of a great exodus that emptied out the Eastern Counties of England.

In the New World the Folgers prospered. John, a widower, married Mirabah Gibbs, whose brother-in-law was instrumental in settling Martha’s Vineyard in the 1640s. By 1642, John and Mirabah had five acres of land in Watertown, Massachusetts, and two young daughters. John’s only son Peter moved to Nantucket, where he worked as a surveyor, miller, schoolteacher, machinist, blacksmith, eyeglass maker, author, interpreter and preacher.

Peter mastered the Wampanoag language to better preach to the Native Americans around Nantucket, supported religious and ethnic tolerance (in an age of witchcraft trials), Gained the Indians’ respect and was adored by his youngest daughter Abiah.

Peter died in 1690, 16 years before Abiah gave birth to Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin would grow up to embody many of his maternal grandfather’s Flemish traits of intellectual curiosity, razor-sharp wit and relentless energy. But she must have told him tales of his Flemish grandfather since he wrote in his autobiography of Peter Folger’s “decent plainness and manly freedom”.

Letter from America is a new monthly feature tracing the historical connections between the United States and Flanders