In 1850 a 15-year-old J.A. Folger left Nantucket, where cheap kerosene was killing the whale oil trade, and headed to California with his two older brothers. The same whaling ships that had sustained his island were being repurposed to carry South American coffee around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Instead of panning for gold, Folger took a carpentry job building William H. Bovee’s Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills, which sold roasted, ground coffee at a time when most buyers still roasted green beans in a pan. After nearly a year he used his wages to buy a partial stake in the mill.

When he finally went to the mining camps, he carried coffee and spice samples and took orders along the trail, selling time to exhausted miners who did not want to roast beans over a campfire. He returned in 1865 to demand a full partnership and by 1872 bought out the other partners, renaming the business J.A. Folger & Company. After his death in 1889, his 26-year-old son James A. Folger II expanded it, and in 1963 Procter & Gamble bought the company and dropped the apostrophe from the name.

• Salesman Frank P. Atha pitched a Texas roasting plant, since roasted coffee went stale before it could ship fresh across the country.
• A New Orleans plant opened in 1960 to use shipping routes from Central America.
• Heiress Abigail Folger was among the victims of the Manson family in 1969.
• J.M. Smucker acquired the brand in 2008 through a tax-avoiding Reverse Morris Trust.
• Mrs. Olson ran in ads from 1965 to 1986, and the 1985 Peter Comes Home for Christmas spot aired almost every year until 1998.