FRANKLIN. BENJAMIN (ante), philosopher and statesman, h. Boston, Mass., Jan. 17, 1706; d. Philadelphia, April 17, 1790. His father, Josiah Franklin, an English dyer and chandler, emigrated to America, with his family, in 1682. His mother, a second wife, was the daughter of Peter Folger, a leading citizen of Nantucket. Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth of seventeen children, and his father intended him to enter the ministry, •but was compelled by narrow circumstances to take him from school when ten years old, and in his twelfth year he became an apprentice with his older brother, a printer, founder of the New England Courant. He was passionately fond of reading, and con• tributed anonymously some articles to his brother's paper. The paper was condemned for its political leanings by the general court, and the elder brother imprisoned for a month. The paper being interdicted in his brother's name, Franklin undertook to issue it in his own name; but difficulty with his brother led him at last to leave Boston clandes tinely, taking passage on a sailing-vessel to New York; and finding no work there, he went to Philadelphia, where he arrived without friends, and almost destitute. He was only 17 years old, and obtained employment with a printer named Keimer, and found a lodging in the house of his future father-in-law. By some published letters he attracted the notice of sir William Keith, governor of the province, who promised him the gov ernment printing, and the following year induced him to go to England to purchase stock for a new printing office; but when arrived in London, Franklin found himself without the governor's promised help, and was obliged to take service with a printer named Palmer to meet his daily necessities. During a stay of a year and a half in Lon don, he published a pamphlet on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, advocating views which lie afterwards repudiated as crude and immature. It gained him the notice, however, of Dr. Mandeville and other men of note. In 1726, he returned to Philadel phia with a Mr. Denham, who was founding a dry-goods shop in that city, with whom he was employed as a clerk. Subsequently he worked for his former employer, Keimer, whom lie assisted in printing bank-notes in New Jersey, constructing for this purpose a copper-plate press, said to have been the first of its kind in America. He founded, with
a fellow-workman, a new printing office, and was married, in 1730, to Miss Deborah Read. He founded, about this time, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and rapidly rose to com petence and public consideration. He started, in 1731, the "Philadelphia Library," chartered in 1742, "the mother of American libraries," and in 1732, first published his almanac, under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, which, known as Poor Richard's Almanac, was continued for 25 years. After a short visit to his relatives in Boston, he was chosen clerk of the general assembly in 1736, and postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737. In 1743, lie planned an academy, which was successfully established six years later and became the foundation of the university of Pennsylvania. In 1744, lie organized a scientific society, which became the American philosophical society, and subsequently the American academy of sciences. About this time he invented the open stove which bears his name, and began those investigations in electricity which have ranked his name with great discoverers. His views, though novel, were at length universally accepted, and he was elected and, in 1762, received the degree of LL.D. from the universities of Oxford, St. Andrews, and:Edinburgh, and in 1775, the. Copley gold medal.
In 1753, he was appointed deputy postmaster-general of the colonies. He was active and influential in the measures for the public defense on the approach of the French and Indian war. He was a commissioner from Pennsylvania at the congress in Albany, . 1754, and submitted a plan for a union of all the colonies under one government. His. plan was rejected, being criticised in America as containing too much "prerogative," while in England it was thought too " democratic." Franklin maintained that these diverse criticisms showed his plan to be the true mean in which safety would be found. War having actually come, he served effectively in gathering supplies and arranging transportation for Braddock's campaign, subscribing £1000 from his private means.