Benjamin Franklin is well known as one of the Founding Fathers of America.
But there was another side to this renowned statesman.
He was a polymath.
Someone who has in-depth knowledge of numerous subjects.
Franklin was a writer, publisher, scientist, and inventor who continually reinvented himself.
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 17, 1706 to candle maker Josiah
Franklin and his second wife Abiah Folger.
He was their eighth child and final son.
He also had seven half-siblings from his father’s first marriage.
At the time of his birth, Boston was already a thriving seaport: filled with sailors, merchants,
preachers, and prostitutes.
Growing up next to the Charles River, he enjoyed swimming, and early on the inventor in him
tinkered with ways to glide through the water more quickly.
He made his own version of fins - his were two wooden hand paddles.
When Franklin was six, his family moved from a tiny two-bedroom house to a larger home
in the heart of Boston.
This allowed his father to entertain interesting dinner guests which Benjamin later remarked
helped “...to improve the minds of his children.”
As for his formal education, Franklin didn’t have much.
His father only had enough money to send him to school for two years.
Squashing the expectation of his son going to Harvard in the hopes of eventually joining
the clergy.
Benjamin’s formal education ended when he was just ten years old.
Some wonder whether he would have been as great a scientist as Sir Isaac Newton if he
had received more education.
But what Franklin lacked in formal schooling he made up for with his passion for reading.
He even stopped eating meat and became a vegetarian in part so he could save to buy more books!
His love of reading and writing flourished further when he worked at his brother James’
printing shop as an apprentice.
He even got a chance to publish his own articles for his brother’s newspaper, one of the
first in America, under the pseudonym “Mrs. Silence Dogood”.
When he was 17 years old, Franklin left Boston for New York hoping to break out on his own
and find work as a printer but he didn’t have any luck.
So he went further south to Philadelphia - which was then the largest city in America.
He worked in several printer shops around town, and later for a Philadelphia merchant.
By that time, Benjamin was tall, muscular, comfortable with any company he kept, and
very charming.
He boarded at the Read family home and fell in love with 15-year-old Deborah Read. (1723)
Deborah’s mother refused to allow their marriage because he didn’t have a penny
to his name.
He continued courting Deborah and years later, they entered into a common-law marriage, and
she ended up raising his illegitimate son William whom he had with an unknown woman.
Deborah and Benjamin had two other children, a son named Francis who died of smallpox at
the age of four and a daughter named Sarah.
Franklin spent his twenties helping to improve the community in Philadelphia.
He formed the “Junto”, a club consisting of young men from diverse backgrounds that
met on Friday evenings to discuss morals, politics, philosophy, and science.
They’d discuss questions like: Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just
liberties of the people?
The Junto meetings were modeled off English coffeehouses which Franklin knew well, having
worked in a printing shop in London for a time.
Members loved to read and decided to pool their money to buy books that everyone could
take their turn enjoying.
They created America’s first lending library, the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Franklin later became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette which served as a voice
of opposition to British colonial rule.
Not only did he print the paper, he often contributed to it.
Like this political cartoon depicting a snake in pieces called “Join or Die” that was
meant to rally the American colonies together.
Each piece of the snake represented a colony. There were 13 colonies yet only 8 pieces of
the snack because he grouped some colonies together.
He also used his newspaper to write about his inventions including his famous experiments
with electricity.
With the help of his son William, he attached a wire to the top of a kite which picked up
an electric charge from thunderstorms and conducted electricity all the way down the
wet kite string.
This led to his invention of the lightning rod, which protects houses from lightning
when it carries the electric charge harmlessly to the ground without burning the house down.
Franklin’s ground-breaking work on electricity made him famous.
That name recognition would come in handy as he was tasked with convincing the French
to support American independence.
He spent several years stationed near Paris as America’s first diplomat.
His popularity and diplomatic skills apparently paid off. France sent troops and supplies
to aid the colonies during the revolutionary war and formally recognized the U.S. as a
sovereign nation.
Franklin was appointed postmaster general during the war and in that role, was responsible
for making sure mail was delivered as quickly as possible by horseback.
This was the crucial line of communication that held the 13 colonies together.
Despite all the hats he wore, Franklin somehow found time to devise inventions throughout
his life.
He created bifocal glasses which have two halves: the upper for distance, the lower
for reading.
The Franklin stove was a metal-lined fireplace that provided more heat and less smoke than
the open fireplaces used at the time.
One of his more unusual inventions was his beloved glass armonica.
He worked with a glassblower to create the musical instrument inspired by musicians who
passed their fingers around the brims of glasses filled with water.
It was very popular during his time. Mozart even composed music for it.
If inventing weren’t enough, he also had a major influence on the science of demography
or studies of the population.
He took notes on population growth and realized the American population was the fastest-growing
on Earth and would surpass that of England in a century.
His writing on the subject was not without controversy.
In an essay, he wrote: “Why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America,
where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawnys, of increasing the lovely
white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country, for such kind
of partiality is natural to mankind.”
Like many of his time, Franklin owned slaves and viewed them as inferior to white Europeans.
But in his later years, he became a vocal proponent of abolishing slavery.
He also didn’t hold other groups in high regard. When there was an increase in German
immigrants to America, he feared it would bring down the country as a whole.
As the population grew, Franklin wrote about the importance of improving farming practices
to meet the booming demand for food.
When he retired from the printing business, he bought a 300-acre farm in nearby New Jersey.
It became his experimental station where he carried out projects in drainage, crop rotation,
and fertilization.
Looks like the Founding Father was now a Founding Foodie!
He also introduced many international foods and plants to America such as Swiss Barley,
Scotch kale, Chinese rhubarb, and silk.
He was exposed to international goods thanks to the time he spent in London on diplomatic
missions.
He made many trips there from the 1750s to the 1770s but would later sever ties to support
the American revolution.
In fact, he had a falling out with his son William who remained loyal to Britain. Franklin
never forgave his son for “taking up Arms against me.”
Franklin was part of a Committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence which explained
why the 13 colonies regarded themselves as independent and no longer under British rule.
He is the only person to sign all three major documents that established the United States
as an independent nation: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and
the United States Constitution.
After the Constitution was ratified in 1788, Franklin wrote to a scientist friend in France
and gave us one of the most famous sayings:
“Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable;
but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
Throughout his middle and later years, Franklin was obese and suffered many health problems.
He had a long history of lung disease and gout - a form of inflammatory arthritis that
results in red and swollen joints.
On April 17, 1790, Franklin died at his home in Philadelphia when an abscess in his lungs
suddenly burst.
He was 84 years old.
It’s estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral - nearly the entire population of
Philadelphia at the time.
Today, every year, tens of thousands of visitors toss pennies at Franklin’s gravestone for
good luck, a nod to a famous saying attributed to him: "a penny saved, is a penny earned”.
Though apparently, he never actually said this.
He did once write: "Remember that time is money.”
Without a doubt, Benjamin Franklin used his time wisely.
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Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom