He attended public schools before studying law. He was admitted to the bar and practiced before serving as member of the Massachusetts State Senate. Folger was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fifteenth Congress and reelected to the Sixteenth Congress (March 4, 1817 – March 3, 1821). He resumed the practice of law, and died in Nantucket on September 8, 1849. He was interred in Friends Burying Ground.