Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 and, as an adolescent, apprenticed as a printer in his older brother’s shop. At age 17, he left for New York City, and then to Philadelphia, to strike out on his own.  Near penniless, he found work in a print shop, and by 1729, now 23 years old, Franklin had his own shop and was the editor and publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette. With the print shop the center of his entrepreneurial activities, Franklin prospered and branched out into other businesses, politics and civic endeavors.  He founded the Philadelphia Library in 1731, and published Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1732.   In 1742 he invented the ‘Franklin stove’, and ten years later flew a kite in a storm to demonstrate that lightening discharged electricity.

Active in politics, Franklin was appointed clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1736, and made postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737, where he preceded to use his influence to turn Philadelphia into the colonies’ mail distribution center. By the 1750s, Franklin had become a major advocate of closer cooperation among colonies and was emerging as an influential force in continental politics.  In 1757, his diplomatic career began to take off when he was made the Pennsylvania assembly’s representative to England, where he remained until 1762, earning degrees from Oxford and Edinburgh universities during his lengthy stay.  He was sent back in 1764 to oppose the Stamp Act, causing King George III to warn his ministers against “that crafty American, who is more than a match for you all.”

Appointed as one of Pennsylvania’s representatives to the Second Continental Congress, Franklin participated in the debates and in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.  During the War of Independence, Franklin served as America’s ambassador to France, then our most important ally and financial benefactor in the struggle for independence.  While still in Europe, he later helped start the negotiations that led to the peace treaty with England in 1783.

As America came to grips with its independence and struggled to create a new form of government, Franklin represented Pennsylvania as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.  When the delegates finally signed off on the document in 1787, it was Franklin, now 81 years old, who saw special meaning in the carving of the sun on the back of the chair from which George Washington presided:  “I have often looked at that sun…without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.  But now…I have the happiness to know it is a rising and not a setting sun.”  That chair still sits in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Go see it.

A few years before he died in 1790, one of Benjamin Franklin’s last official acts was the signing of a petition to Congress as the President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.  The petition asked for justice for the blacks and an end in the “traffic in the persons of our fellowmen.”

Available on the internet are a great variety of quality sites devoted to Benjamin Franklin’s life and to some of the important contributions he has made to our Nation.  Listed by topic are a number of recommended sites devoted to this most productive, provocative and interesting of our Founding Fathers.