Benjamin Franklin, Youngest Son of Seventeen Children, Born January 17, 1706

Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, philosopher and printer, was born in Boston January 17, 1706, youngest son of the seventeen children of Josiah and Abiah Folger Franklin.

Born a subject of Queen Anne of England and on the same day receiving the baptismal name of Benjamin in the Old South Church, he continued for more than seventy of the eighty-four years of his life a subject of four successive British monarchs. During that period, neither Anne nor the three Georges, who succeeded her, had a subject of whom they had more reason to be proud nor one whom at his death their people generally supposed they had more reason to detest.

Franklin learned the art of printing with his brother, but they disagreeing, Benjamin left Boston when seventeen years old, sought employment in New York, but, not succeeding, went to Philadelphia and there found success, and for much more than half a century was the greatest man in Pennsylvania.

Franklin soon attracted the attention of Governor Keith, who, making him a promise of the Government printing, induced young Franklin to go to England to purchase printing materials. He was deceived and remained there eighteen months, working as a journeyman printer in London. He returned to Philadelphia late in 1726, an accomplished printer and a man of the world.

In 1730 he had a printing establishment and newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and stationers’ shop of his own. Was married to Deborah Read, a young woman whose husband had absconded, and was already pressing upon public opinion with a powerful leverage.

45For many years he published an almanac under the assumed name of Richard Saunders. It became widely known as “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” and is still one of the marvels of modern literature.

As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no superiors. As a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his day, but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his sovereigns or their parliaments.

Franklin was the chief founder of the Philadelphia Library in 1731. The organization of a police and later of the militia for Philadelphia; of companies for extinguishing fires; making the sweeping and paving of the streets a municipal function, and establishment of an academy which has matured into the now famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the conspicuous reforms which he planted and watered in the columns of the Gazette.

In 1736 he became clerk of the Provincial Assembly, and the following year was postmaster of Philadelphia. He was the founder of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in 1744, and six years later was elected to the Provincial Assembly.

In 1753 Franklin was appointed deputy postmaster for the English-American colonies. In 1754 he was a delegate to the Colonial Congress at Albany, in which he prepared a plan of union for the colonies, which was the basis of the Articles of Confederation adopted by Congress more than twenty years afterward.

Franklin graduated from journalism into diplomacy as naturally as winter glides into spring.

The question of taxing the Penn Proprietary estates for the defense of the Province from the French and Indians had assumed such an acute stage in 1757 that the Assembly decided to petition the King upon the subject, and selected Franklin to visit London and present their petition. The next forty-one years of his life were virtually spent in the diplomatic service.

Franklin was five years absent on this first mission. Every interest in London was againstagainst him. He finally obtained a compromise, and for his success the Penns and their partisans never forgave him, and his fellow Colonists never forgot him.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain. The question of taxing the Colonies without representation was soon thrust upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was sent out again to urge its repeal. He reached London in November, 1764, where he remained the next eleven years, until it became apparent that there would never be a change during the reign of George III.

Satisfied that his usefulness was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia March 21, 1775, and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly of Pennsylvania a delegate to Continental Congress.

Franklin served on ten committees in this Congress. He was one 46of five who drew up the Declaration of Independence, July, 1776, and in September following was chosen unanimously as one of the three commissioners to be sent to solicit for the infant Republic the aid of France and the sympathies of Continental Europe.

Franklin had begun his investigations and experiments in electricity, by which he demonstrated its identity with lightning, as early as 1746. The publication of his account of these experiments procured his election as an honorary member of the Royal Society of London and his undisputed rank among the most eminent natural philosophers of his time.

He received the Copley gold medal and the degree of LL.D. from Oxford and Edinburgh in 1762. Harvard and Yale had previously conferred upon him the degree of master of arts.

When Franklin arrived in Paris, therefore, he was already a member of every important learned society in Europe.

The history of his mission and how Franklin succeeded in procuring financial aid from the French King, and finally a treaty of peace more favorable to his country than either England or France wished to concede, has been often told.

Franklin’s reputation grew with his success. More was published about him in the newspapers of the world than of any other man that ever lived.

Franklin landed in Philadelphia on September 13, 1785, on the same wharf on which sixty-two years before he had stepped, a friendless and virtually penniless runaway apprentice of seventeen.

Though now in his seventy-ninth year and a victim of infirmities, he had hardly unpacked his trunks when he was chosen a member of the Municipal Council of Philadelphia and its chairman. Shortly after he was elected President of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make the vote unanimous.

He was unanimously elected for two succeeding years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the convention which met in May, 1787, to frame the Constitution under which the people of the United States are still living. With the adoption of that instrument, to which he contributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official life, though not from the service of the public.

His last public act was the signing of a memorial to Congress on the subject of human slavery by the Abolition Society, of which he was the founder and president.

He died in Philadelphia April 17, 1790, and four days later his body was interred in Christ Church burying ground. His funeral was such as the greatest philosopher and statesman had deserved.

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