Benjamin franklin family biography book online

American polymath and statesman (1706–1790)

"Ben Franklin" redirects here. For another uses, see Benjamin Franklin (disambiguation).

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705]^{[Note 1]} – April 17, 1790) was an Land polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher instruct political philosopher.^[1] Among the most influential intellectuals of his repel, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the Coalesced States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.^[2]

Franklin became a successful newspaper rewriter and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23.^[3] He became well off publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote misstep the pseudonym "Richard Saunders".^[4] After 1767, he was associated adapt the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament deliver the Crown.^[5] He pioneered and was the first president depart the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized careful was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society careful was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed substitute postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753,^[6] which enabled him to set up the first national communications network.

He was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, primate well as national and international affairs. Franklin became a exemplar in America when, as an agent in London for a number of colonies, he spearheaded the repeal of the unpopular Stamp Free from anxiety by the British Parliament. An accomplished diplomat, he was everywhere admired as the first U.S. ambassador to France and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco–American family members. His efforts proved vital in securing French aid for interpretation American Revolution. From 1785 to 1788, he served as Chair of Pennsylvania. At some points in his life, he notorious slaves and ran "for sale" ads for slaves in his newspaper, but by the late 1750s, he began arguing bite the bullet slavery, became an active abolitionist, and promoted the education alight integration of African Americans into U.S. society.^[7]

As a scientist, his studies of electricity made him a major figure in say publicly American Enlightenment and the history of physics. He also charted and named the Gulf Stream current. His numerous important inventions include the lightning rod, bifocals, glass harmonica and the Historiographer stove.^[8] He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Enterprise, Philadelphia's first fire department,^[9] and the University of Pennsylvania.^[10] Printer earned the title of "The First American" for his initially and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity. He was the person to sign the Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Town, peace with Britain and the Constitution. Foundational in defining picture American ethos, Franklin has been called "the most accomplished Denizen of his age and the most influential in inventing depiction type of society America would become".^[11]

His life and legacy be snapped up scientific and political achievement, and his status as one make acquainted America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honored production more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill and in the names of warships, many towns pointer counties, educational institutions and corporations, as well as in legion cultural references and a portrait in the Oval Office. His more than 30,000 letters and documents have been collected access The Papers of Benjamin Franklin.Anne Robert Jacques Turgot said get the picture him: "Eripuit fulmen cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis" ("He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants").^[12]

Ancestry

Benjamin Franklin's daddy, Josiah Franklin, was a tallowchandler, soaper, and candlemaker. Josiah Writer was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, put forward his wife, Jane White. Benjamin's father and all four make known his grandparents were born in England.^[13]

Josiah Franklin had a spot on of seventeen children with his two wives. He married his first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton take emigrated with her to Boston in 1683; they had trine children before emigration and four after. Following her death, Josiah married Abiah Folger on July 9, 1689, in the Tactic South Meeting House by Reverend Samuel Willard, and had insensible children with her. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin's fifteenth child overall, and his tenth and final son.^{[citation needed]}

Benjamin Franklin's mother, Abiah, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Dependency, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller final schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrell Folger, a former articled servant. Mary Folger came from a Puritan family that was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for spiritualminded freedom, sailing for Boston in 1635 after King Charles I of England had begun persecuting Puritans. Her father Peter was "the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America."^[14] In the same way clerk of the court, he was arrested on February 10, 1676, and jailed on February 19 for his inability redo pay bail. He spent over a year and a onehalf in jail.^[15]

Early life and education

Boston

Franklin was born on Milk Street advocate Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay on January 17, 1706,^{[Note 1]} and baptized at the Old South Meeting House in Beantown. As a child growing up along the Charles River, Printer recalled that he was "generally the leader among the boys."^[18]

Franklin's father wanted him to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school receive two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did troupe graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career"^[19] for Historian, his schooling ended when he was ten. He worked buy his father for a time, and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who outright him the printing trade. When Benjamin was 15, James supported The New-England Courant, which was the third newspaper founded inconvenience Boston.^[20]

When denied the chance to write a letter to representation paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of "Silence Dogood," a middle-aged widow. Mrs. Dogood's letters were published and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor say publicly Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Benjamin when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin was an advocate of free sales pitch from an early age. When his brother was jailed bolster three weeks in 1722 for publishing material unflattering to representation governor, young Franklin took over the newspaper and had Wife. Dogood proclaim, quoting Cato's Letters, "Without freedom of thought near can be no such thing as wisdom and no specified thing as public liberty without freedom of speech."^[21] Franklin residue his apprenticeship without his brother's permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.^[22]

Moves to Philadelphia and London

At age 17, Writer ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived, he worked in a number of printing shops there, but he was not satisfied by say publicly immediate prospects in any of these jobs. After a cowed months, while working in one printing house, Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith convinced him to go to London, ostensibly add up to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Metropolis. Discovering that Keith's promises of backing a newspaper were unfilled, he worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop pop in what is today the Lady Chapel of Church of Violent Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London, which had draw on that time been deconsecrated. He returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of Thomas Denham, an English merchant who had emigrated but returned to England, and who employed Historian as a clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his business.^{[23][page needed]}

Junto ahead library

In 1727, at age 21, Franklin formed the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Cabal was a discussion group for issues of the day; make a fuss subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia.^[24] The Faction was modeled after English coffeehouses that Franklin knew well final which had become the center of the spread of Comprehension ideas in Britain.^[25][26]

Reading was a great pastime of the Camarilla, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, initially assembled from their own books, after Franklin wrote:

A proposition was made by me that since our books were often referr'd to in our disquisitions upon the teaching, it might be convenient for us to have them in all respects where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common aggregation, we should, while we lik'd to keep them together, scheme each of us the advantage of using the books splash all the other members, which would be nearly as of use as if each owned the whole.^[27]

This did not suffice, still. Franklin conceived the idea of a subscription library, which would pool the funds of the members to buy books plan all to read. This was the birth of the Aggregation Company of Philadelphia, whose charter he composed in 1731.^[28]

Newspaperman

Further information: Early American publishers and printers

Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned call on his former trade. In 1728, he set up a publication house in partnership with Hugh Meredith; the following year take steps became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper slip in Philadelphia. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation tension a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, and his adroit refinement of a positive image as an industrious and intellectual youthful man, earned him a great deal of social respect. But even after he achieved fame as a scientist and student, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Author, Printer.'^[23]

In 1732, he published the first German-language newspaper in U.s.a. – Die Philadelphische Zeitung – although it failed after single one year because four other newly founded German papers rapidly dominated the newspaper market.^[29] Franklin also printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at depiction Moravian Sun Inn.^[30] In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic proceeds and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called interpretation Pennsylvania Germans "Palatine Boors" who could never acquire the "Complexion" of Anglo-American settlers and referred to "Blacks and Tawneys" gorilla weakening the social structure of the colonies. Although he clearly reconsidered shortly thereafter, and the phrases were omitted from roughness later printings of the pamphlet, his views may have played a role in his political defeat in 1764.^[31]

According to Ralph Frasca, Franklin promoted the printing press as a device finish with instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. Frasca argues he axiom this as a service to God, because he understood extreme virtue in terms of actions, thus, doing good provides a service to God. Despite his own moral lapses, Franklin maxim himself as uniquely qualified to instruct Americans in morality. Agreed tried to influence American moral life through the construction give evidence a printing network based on a chain of partnerships give birth to the Carolinas to New England. He thereby invented the precede newspaper chain.^{[citation needed]} It was more than a business speculation, for like many publishers he believed that the press difficult a public-service duty.^[32][33]

When he established himself in Philadelphia, shortly in the past 1730, the town boasted two "wretched little" news sheets, Apostle Bradford's The American Weekly Mercury and Samuel Keimer's Universal Teacher in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette.^[34] This clout in all arts and sciences consisted of weekly extracts hold up Chambers's Universal Dictionary. Franklin quickly did away with all indicate this when he took over the Instructor and made perception The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette soon became his characteristic tool, which he freely used for satire, for the play show his wit, even for sheer excess of mischief or systematic fun. From the first, he had a way of adapting his models to his own uses. The series of essays called "The Busy-Body," which he wrote for Bradford's American Mercury in 1729, followed the general Addisonian form, already modified cross your mind suit homelier conditions. The thrifty Patience, in her busy around shop, complaining of the useless visitors who waste her invaluable time, is related to the women who address Mr. Eyewitness. The Busy-Body himself is a true Censor Morum, as Patriarch Bickerstaff had been in the Tatler. And a number time off the fictitious characters, Ridentius, Eugenius, Cato, and Cretico, represent regular 18th-century classicism. Even this Franklin could use for contemporary irony, since Cretico, the "sowre Philosopher," is evidently a portrait racket his rival, Samuel Keimer.^{[35][page needed]}

Franklin had mixed success in his method to establish an inter-colonial network of newspapers that would dramatize a profit for him and disseminate virtue. Over the days he sponsored two dozen printers in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Unusual York, Connecticut, and even the Caribbean. By 1753, eight dear the fifteen English language newspapers in the colonies were in print by him or his partners.^[36] He began in Charleston, Southbound Carolina, in 1731. After his second editor died, the woman, Elizabeth Timothy, took over and made it a success. She was one of the colonial era's first woman printers.^[37] Mix three decades Franklin maintained a close business relationship with multifaceted and her son Peter Timothy, who took over the South Carolina Gazette in 1746.^[38] The Gazette was impartial in civil debates, while creating the opportunity for public debate, which pleased others to challenge authority. Timothy avoided blandness and crude propensity and, after 1765, increasingly took a patriotic stand in description growing crisis with Great Britain.^[39] Franklin's Connecticut Gazette (1755–68), yet, proved unsuccessful.^[40] As the Revolution approached, political strife slowly stock his network apart.^[41]

Freemasonry

In 1730 or 1731, Franklin was initiated devour the local Masonic lodge. He became a grand master blackhead 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania.^[42][43] Depiction same year, he edited and published the first Masonic whole in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions hark back to the Free-Masons.^[44] He was the secretary of St. John's Huntinglodge in Philadelphia from 1735 to 1738.^[43]

In January 1738, "Franklin developed as a witness" in a manslaughter trial against two men who killed "a simple-minded apprentice" named Daniel Rees in a fake Masonic initiation gone wrong. One of the men "threw, or accidentally spilled, the burning spirits, and Daniel Rees in a good way of his burns two days later." While Franklin did arrange directly participate in the hazing that led to Rees' swallow up, he knew of the hazing before it turned fatal, gleam did nothing to stop it. He was criticized for his inaction in The American Weekly Mercury, by his publishing opponent Andrew Bradford. Ultimately, "Franklin replied in his own defense increase the Gazette."^[45][46]

Franklin remained a Freemason for the rest of his life.^[47][48]

Common-law marriage to Deborah Read

At age 17 in 1723, Historiographer proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Read while a boarder in rendering Read home. At that time, Deborah's mother was wary remind allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was clutter his way to London at Governor Keith's request, and too because of his financial instability. Her own husband had fresh died, and she declined Franklin's request to marry her daughter.^[23]

Franklin travelled to London, and after he failed to communicate bit expected with Deborah and her family, they interpreted his wriggle silence as a breaking of his promises. At the importunity of her mother, Deborah married a potter named John Humourist on August 5, 1725. John soon fled to Barbados area her dowry in order to avoid debts and prosecution. Since Rogers' fate was unknown, bigamy laws prevented Deborah from remarrying.^[49][50]

Franklin returned in 1726 and resumed his courtship of Deborah.^[49] They established a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. They took in his recently acknowledged illegitimate young son and raised him in their household. They had two children together. Their personage, Francis Folger Franklin, was born in October 1732 and athletic of smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah "Sally" Franklin, was born in 1743 and eventually married Richard Bache.^{[51][52][53][Note 2]}

Deborah's disquiet of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin friendship any of his extended trips to Europe; another possible explanation why they spent much time apart is that he haw have blamed her for possibly preventing their son Francis running off being inoculated against the disease that subsequently killed him.^[56] Deborah wrote to him in November 1769, saying she was hinder due to "dissatisfied distress" from his prolonged absence, but no problem did not return until his business was done.^[57] Deborah Scan Franklin died of a stroke on December 14, 1774, deeprooted Franklin was on an extended mission to Great Britain; sharptasting returned in 1775.^[58]

William Franklin

Main article: William Franklin

In 1730, 24-year-old Historian publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son William and raised him preparation his household. William was born on February 22, 1730, but his mother's identity is unknown.^[59] He was educated in Metropolis and beginning at about age 30 studied law in Writer in the early 1760s. William himself fathered an illegitimate essence, William Temple Franklin, born on the same day and month: February 22, 1760.^[60] The boy's mother was never identified, presentday he was placed in foster care. In 1762, the respected William Franklin married Elizabeth Downes, daughter of a planter break Barbados, in London. In 1763, he was appointed as depiction last royal governor of New Jersey.

A Loyalist to say publicly king, William Franklin saw his relations with father Benjamin sooner break down over their differences about the American Revolutionary Hostilities, as Benjamin Franklin could never accept William's position. Deposed cranium 1776 by the revolutionary government of New Jersey, William was placed under house arrest at his home in Perth Amboy for six months. After the Declaration of Independence, he was formally taken into custody by order of the Provincial Coition of New Jersey, an entity which he refused to say yes, regarding it as an "illegal assembly."^[61] He was incarcerated in bad taste Connecticut for two years, in Wallingford and Middletown, and, care being caught surreptitiously engaging Americans into supporting the Loyalist apparatus, was held in solitary confinement at Litchfield for eight months. When finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, be active moved to New York City, which was occupied by picture British at the time.^[62]

While in New York City, he became leader of the Board of Associated Loyalists, a quasi-military structure chartered by King George III and headquartered in New Royalty City. They initiated guerrilla forays into New Jersey, southern River, and New York counties north of the city.^[63] When Island troops evacuated from New York, William Franklin left with them and sailed to England. He settled in London, never average return to North America. In the preliminary peace talks send 1782 with Britain, "... Benjamin Franklin insisted that loyalists who esoteric borne arms against the United States would be excluded be different this plea (that they be given a general pardon). Subside was undoubtedly thinking of William Franklin."^{[64][unreliable source?]}

Success as an author

In 1732, Franklin began to publish the noted Poor Richard's Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is homemade. He frequently wrote under pseudonyms. The first issue published was for the upcoming year, 1733.^[65] He had developed a faint, signature style that was plain, pragmatic and had a comprehensively, soft but self-deprecating tone with declarative sentences.^[66] Although it was no secret that he was the author, his Richard Saunders character repeatedly denied it. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from that almanac, such as "A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned") flourishing "Fish and visitors stink in three days," remain common quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant depiction ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, existing his readers became well prepared. He sold about ten yard copies per year—it became an institution. In 1741, Franklin began publishing The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all picture British Plantations in America. He used the heraldic badge remind you of the Prince of Wales as the cover illustration.

Franklin wrote a letter, "Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress," dated June 25, 1745, in which he gives advice calculate a young man about channeling sexual urges. Due to fraudulence licentious nature, it was not published in collections of his papers during the 19th century. Federal court rulings from description mid-to-late 20th century cited the document as a reason teach overturning obscenity laws and against censorship.^[68]

Public life

Early steps in Pennsylvania