Sons & Daughters of Liberty 

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 1706 to Josiah and Abiah Franklin. Benjamin’s father had intended for his son to join the clergy but could not afford to put Ben through the required years of schooling. As a backup, Josiah apprenticed Benjamin to his older brother, James, who owned a printing business. James ran The New England Courant which, at the time, was the only  newspaper that covered local, as opposed to widespread news. Being an apprentice, Benjamin was not allowed to write for the paper, so instead he began writing letters under the alias “Silence Dogood” and slipped them under the door of the printing shop. Not long after, James was arrested for criticizing the government. While his brother was away, Benjamin managed the paper on his own and turned it into a success. Likely because of jealousy, James and Benjamin argued about the paper upon his release from prison, which lead to Benjamin running away at the age of seventeen. Benjamin took a boat to New York and then made his way to Philadelphia, where he was found dirty and penniless by a young girl named Deborah Read, whose family ended up sheltering him. Soon after Benjamin, again, found work as an apprentice printer under the governor of Philadelphia. Eventually, Benjamin started his own printing business that quickly grew and thrived. In 1730, Benjamin married Deborah, the girl who had found him when he arrived in Philadelphia and together they ran his printing business along with a general goods and a book store.

 

Contributions to society

 

     Benjamin had a large impact on Philadelphian society. He set projects in motion to clean and renovate the streets and began raising awareness of the need to clean up the environment. In 1731, Benjamin came up with a financial plan which allowed for more books to be purchased from England and helped to form the library company. In 1751 he pulled some people together to form a much needed hospital. He also formed a firefighting company under the motto “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” To aid those who had been victims of fire damage, Benjamin set up one of the first insurance policies.

 

Inventions

 

     Benjamin Franklin invented many useful items throughout his life that are commonly underappreciated by people today. Perhaps Benjamin’s most famous invention was bifocals. Bifocals are glasses that are split, the top part is for viewing objects at normal distances while the bottom part acts sort of like a magnifying glass and is used for reading. Benjamin also made many groundbreaking discoveries with electricity, for example, he realized that electricity travels through conductive objects and cannot be destroyed, only redirected. He also discovered that electricity is the attraction of a negative charge to a positive charge. Many of the terms he used to describe his discoveries (including; battery, charge, condenser, conductor, plus, minus, positively, negatively, and armature) are still used today. Using his understanding of electricity, Benjamin invented the lightning rod. The lightning rod was a six to eight foot iron rod that one would attach to their roof. Running from the rod into the ground was a long, thin, copper wire. The purpose of the lightning rod was to redirect lightning bolts away from one’s house and into the ground. In 1742 Benjamin invented the “Franklin Stove.” The Franklin Stove was an iron furnace that stood in the center of a room, it had vents to increase circulation. The stove also burned through wood less quickly than a fireplace and released less smoke into the house, the fact that it was made out of metal also meant that it would stay worm and continue to heat the house for a time after the fuel was used up. A few other things Benjamin created were flexible, and less painful catheters, an instrument consisting of thirty seven glass bowls that are rubbed with moistened fingers to create sounds, swim fins, and an odometer (though kinds of odometers had existed before, Franklin did invent his own version).

 

Trips to England

 

     The first time Benjamin went to England was not long after he was apprenticed as a printer in Philadelphia. The governor told Benjamin that he would set him up with his own printing business if he were to travel to England to purchase supplies. The governor, however, went back on his promise and Benjamin was forced to stay in England for months doing print work. In 1757, Benjamin returned to England to represent Pennsylvania in a dispute about who should represent the colonies and ended up staying there until 1775. During those eighteen years, Benjamin also served as a representative for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. England, being a more developed and advanced country, placed more importance on education and the sciences. Because of this, Benjamin enjoyed living in England and having the ability to converse with those of similar intellect. In 1765, Benjamin aided the colonies again by making a testimony before parliament which helped to persuade the removal of The Stamp Act. After witnessing the widespread colonial resistance of the stamp act and the political corruption surrounding him in England, Benjamin began to wonder if the colonies should separate from England. Though Benjamin had proposed a plan for uniting the colonies in 1754, he had only just began putting extreme thought to it. In what came to be known as the “Hutchinson Affair,” Benjamin exposed Thomas Hutchinson (the governor of Massachusetts) as a puppet of the British king by intercepting and sending letters between the king and Hutchinson, to the colonies. This angered many colonists and likely contributed to the support of the idea of separating from England.

 

Role in the Revolution

 

     Benjamin was elected to the Second Continental Congress (consisting of the five people; Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and himself) and worked with them to draft the Declaration of Independence. Though Jefferson did much of the writing, Benjamin contributed many of the ideas presented within it. In 1776, after signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin again traveled to another country to represent the colonies, though this time it was France instead of England. The colonists knew they needed aid if they were going to defeat Britain, so they turned to the country with the biggest grudge against Britain, France, and sent Benjamin to sign a treaty with them. Benjamin quickly gained a widespread reputation in France, he was the humble politician from America who dressed like a common “backwoodsman” yet could compete intellectually with anyone. Due, in part to the French’s fondness toward Benjamin, France signed a treaty with America. After that, Benjamin continued to assure the French that they did the right thing and helped to secure much needed loans.  Benjamin returned to America in his late seventies and became president pf the Executive Council of Pennsylvania and served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and signed the Constitution. He then began writing an anti-slavery treaties before dying in 1790 at the age of eighty four.