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Frank Ehig Babiak hittifs born & Juny 1706
What Abiak hy Wife born & Aay 1708

FACSIMILE OF ENTRY OF FRANKLIN'S BIRTH IN BOSTON TOWN RECORDS.

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THE MANY-SIDED FRANKLIN.

FRANKLIN'S FAMILY RELATIONS.

BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD,

Author of "The True George Washington," "The Honorable Peter Sterling," etc.

MAN," wrote Franklin, "who makes boast of his ancestors doth but advertise his own insignificance, for the pedigrees of great men are commonly known"; and elsewhere he advised: "Let our fathers and grandfathers be valued for their goodness, ourselves for our own." Clearly this objection extended to pride of birth alone, and not to knowledge of one's forebears; for Franklin himself displayed not a little interest in his progenitors, and when he went to England as the agent of his colony he devoted both time and travel to searching out the truth concerning them. Nor was he, in fact, wholly without conceit of family. In default of discovered greatness in his kindred, he expressed pleasure in an inference that the family name was derived from the old social order of small freeholders, and,

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therefore, that they were once the betters of the yeomen and feudatories.

Still another fact, too, suggests that he was not wholly indifferent to the world's knowledge of his lineage. Though his father questioned if they were entitled to use either of the Franklin arms, and added that "our circumstances have been such as that it hath hardly been worth while to concern ourselves much about these things any farther than to tickle the fancy a little," Benjamin did not hesitate to appropriate one of the Franklin coats of arms while yet only a master printer, for as early as 1751 he advertised:

Coat of Arms engrav'd, containing two Lions Lost about 5 weeks since, a silver seal, with a Heads, two Doves and a Dolphin. Whoever brings it to the Post-Office, shall have Five Shillings reward.

Furthermore, in adopting this heraldic badge, he made objection to its being cheapened, by telling a soap-making relative that he "would not have him put the Franklin arms on" his cakes, although he did not mind a brother in the same business using the escutcheon as a book-plate.

Franklin's inquiry into the history of his family resulted in the discovery that they had dwelt on some thirty acres of their own land in the village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, upward of three hundred years, and that for many generations the eldest son had been village blacksmith-a custom so established previous to the removal across the Atlantic that the first immigrant bred up his eldest son to the trade in Boston. Fate, having other uses for Benjamin, carefully guarded him from Vulcan's calling by making him' the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations.

Josiah Franklin came to New England about 1685, with Ann, his wife, and three children, a number which swelled to seven within the next four years, the mother dying

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in childbed in 1689. Less than six months later the widower married Abiah Folger, and to this union there were born ten children, making in all Writ

seventeen. ing of the large birth-rate in the colonies, Franklin asserted that it was rare for more than half of each family to reach adult life, a statement not derived from personal experience; for, " out of seventeen children that our father had, thirteen lived to grow up and settle in the world." In common with other New England families of that day, the stock seemed to be weakened by this redundancy: though Josiah was one of five brothers, and the father of ten sons, there was not, when the eighteenth century ended, a single descendant of any one of the fifteen entitled to the

surname.

DRAWN BY C. A. VANDERHOOF.

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his struggle with poverty and his huge family, was a good parent to his youngest boy, giving heed to his moral, mental, and temporal beginnings. After such brief term of school as he could afford the lad, he took him into his own shop, till Ben made obvious his dislike to the cutting of wicks, the hanging of dips, and the casting of soap. Taking pains then to discover his son's preferences, he finally apprenticed him as printer's devil to his son James. When the brothers quarreled, and appeal was made to the father, "judgment," the prentice says, "was generally in my favour." And though Ben earned his own livelihood from the time that he was twelve years of age, and saw his father only three times after he was

ANN FRANKLIN'S GRAVESTONE, GRANARY BURYINGGROUND, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

Benjamin, the "tithe," or tenth, of Josiah's sons, born January 6, 1706, outlived them all. From his father he derived a heritage difficult to measure, but two of his qualities were singled out by the son as specially noteworthy: "a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs, "anda" mechanic genius" in being "very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools." "It was indeed a lowly dwelling we brought up in," wrote one of the children, many years after, "but we were fed plentifully, made comfortable with fire and clothing, had seldom any contention among us, but all was harmony, especially between the heads, and they were universally respected, and the

were

sixteen, wherever he speaks of him it is with affection and respect. When he wrote to him, the letters began," Honored Father," and ended, "I am your dutiful son," or "I am your affectionate and dutiful son"; while Josiah Franklin, in turn, began his letters, "Loving Son," and ended one," With hearty love." More warmly still the son spoke of his father and mother in a letter to his sister, whom he chided because "you have mentioned nothing in your letter of our dear parents," writing again, during the final illness of his father: "Dear Sister, I love you tenderly for your care of our father in his sickness." Josiah Franklin died in 1745,

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FRANKLIN SEAL. FROM AN IMPRESSION
IN POSSESSION OF THE AMERICAN PHILO-
SOPHICAL SOCIETY, PHILADELPHIA,
(ENLARGED.)

PENNSYLVANIA.

leaving an estate valued at twenty-four hundred dollars.

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In Franklin's biography there is only the barest mention of his mother, Abiah, and merely as the daughter of "one of the first settlers of New England." Presumably this silence. was due to the eighteenth-century attitude toward women more than to any want of affection, for the two corresponded with regularity, even after the mother was "very weak and short of breathso that I cannot sit up to write altho' I sleep well o' nights and my cough is better and I have a pretty good stomach to my victuals," and she had to beg her son to "please excuse my bad writeing and inditing for all tell me I am too old to write letters." To her Franklin sent gifts of various kinds, including "a moidore . . . which please to accept towards chaise hire, that you may ride warm to meetings this winter." Upon her death, in 1752, he wrote his sister Jane: "I received yours with the affecting news of our dear mother's death. I thank you for your long continued care of her in her old age and sickness. Our distance made it impracticable for us to attend her, but you have supplied all. She has lived a good life, as well as long one, and is happy."

DRAWN BY C. A. VANDERHOOF.

FRANKLIN'S MONUMENT TO HIS PARENTS, GRANARY BURYING-GROUND, BOSTON.

Franklin paid for the stone which marked the grave of his parents, and wrote for it an inscription which vouched that "He was a pious and

prudent man; She a discreet and virtuous woman"; and though elsewhere he cites the conventional epitaph as the extreme form of falsehood, he was certainly justified in this inscription. "Honor thy father and mother-i. e. live so as to be an honor to them tho' they are dead," he made Poor Richard advise his readers, and for once preacher and practiser were united.

Among the Chinese [he noted, with approval], the most ancient, and from long experience the wisest of nations, honor does not descend, but ascends. If a man, from his learning, his wisdom, or his valor, is promoted by the emperor to the rank of Mandarin, his parents are immediately entitled to all the same ceremonies of respect from the people that are established that it must have been owing to the education, as due to the Mandarin himself; on the supposition instruction, and good example afforded him by his parents, that he was rendered capable of serving the public.

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Of his relations with the sixteen brothers and sisters it is impossible to deal with any fullness. Four of the brothers died young, and a fifth, taking to the sea, was so little

JOSIAH FRANKLIN AND ABIAH HIS WIFE

LIE HERE INTERRED.

THEY LIVED LOVINGLY TOGETHER IN WEDLOCK FIFTY FIVE YEARS, AND NITHOU
ORMANY GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT, BY CONSTANT LABOR AND HONEST INDUSTRY, MAINTAINED AL
SAMILY COMFORTABLY, AND BROUGHT UP THIRTEEN CHILDREN AND SEVEN GRANDCHILDREN KES
PECTABLY. FROM THIS INSTANCE, READER, BE ENCOURAGED TO DILIGENCE IN THE ALLING AN
TRUST NOT FROVIDENCE. HE WAS A PIOUS AND PRUDENT MAN; SHE ADISCREET AND NISTUOUSN

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LETTERING ON THE MONUMENT TO FRANKLIN'S PARENTS, GRANARY BURYING-GROUND, BOSTON.

an element in the family life that Benjamin remembered "thirteen (some of us then very young) all at one table, when an entertainment was made at our house on the occasion of the return of our brother Josiah, who had been absent in the East Indies and unheard of for nine years." If this brother, who soon after was lost at sea, was apparently a small component in Franklin's life, he none the less influenced it materially, since from him the youngster imbibed a keen desire to be a sailor, and his father's fear that he would run away was a potent motive for letting the boy leave the trade of soap-making.

Franklin was forbidden presently by the government to print his newspaper, the "New England Courant," and it was continued, by a subterfuge, in Benjamin's name, the indenture being canceled to make the trick a little less barefaced. Availing himself of this technical release, Franklin left his brother's service-an act that he later acknowledged to be his first serious "erratum," and one which set James Franklin to advertising for "A Likely Lad for an Apprentice," little recking how likely a lad he had lost. For a number of years the breach thus made continued to exist, though the mother urged

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FRANKLIN BURIAL PLOT IN CHRIST CHURCH CEMETERY, PHILADELPHIA, SHOWING GRAVESTONE OF FRANCIS FOLGER FRANKLIN.

As already mentioned, Benjamin did not get on well with the half-brother to whom he was bound to learn printing. James Franklin was only ten years older than his apprentice, and very quickly Benjamin made himself as expert as his brother, who, if we are to believe Franklin, turned jealous, and on occasion beat him with unnecessary severity; though, in charging that his master was passionate, the printer's boy confessed that he himself was saucy and provoking. James

VOL. LVII.-5.

reconciliation on them both. After James Franklin's death, a turn of Fortune's wheel led Franklin to take the eldest son of this brother as an apprentice; and though he records that "Jemmy Franklin when with me was always dissatisfied and grumbling,' yet from the moment the apprenticeship was over "he and I" became "Good friends." He helped the boy to establish himself as a printer at New Haven, and again at Newport, sent him occasional gifts of paper, printing

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