blacksmith's trade in his father's shop, but, aided by Squire Palmer and his own natural aptitude for affairs, became, as his nephew tells us, a conveyancer, "something of a lawyer, clerk of the county court, and clerk to the archdeacon,* a very leading man in all county affairs, and much employed in public business." He was a man of great public spirit, set on foot a subscription for a chime of bells, and devised a method of saving the meadows from being overflowed. Such an opinion of his skill and wisdom prevailed in the county, that his advice was sought on all occasions by all sorts of people, and many looked upon him as a conjurer.t He left a fortune of fifteen hundred pounds. Sixty years after his death, when the son of Benjamin Franklin heard the history of his Uncle Thomas, and saw in the county the evidences of his ingenuity and public spirit, he was struck with the resemblance to the character and career of his father. If Uncle Thomas, said he, had died on the day of my father's birth, one might have supposed a transmigration. John, the second of the four sons of Thomas the elder, became a dyer at Banbury in Oxfordshire. Into his house, at Banbury, he received his aged sire when he could wield the hammer no longer, and there the old man died. Benjamin, the third son, also a dyer, was the scholar of the family, a pure, earnest, shy, and gentle spirit, greatly beloved all the days of his life, author of many a pious acrostic and homely psalm. In one of his poetry books he pasted the hand-bill of his trade. It is headed by an exceedingly rude wood-cut, which represents an Indian lady walking, one servant "This archdeacon, as I learn from the inscription on his monument in Ecton church, was also named John Palmer. He was archdeacon of Northampton and rector of the parish of Ecton. His eldest son, who was also named John, succeeded him in the rectorship of Ecton; and this son was succeeded by a second son named Thomas. All of these have monuments in Ecton church."History and Antiquities of Ecton. + Franklin to his wife.-Sparks, vii., 179. Thomas Franklin and his wife Eleanor lie buried in Ecton churchyard. The following are the inscriptions on their tombstones: Here lyeth Here holding an umbrella over her head, and another carrying her train. Underneath are the following words: * To Dr. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, of Boston, I was indebted for a sight of Uncle Benjamin's poetry book, and for the extracts which I wished from it. CHAPTER II. FRANKLIN'S FATHER AND MOTHER. THE prosperity of Thomas Franklin, by raising the family above its hereditary rank, was probably the cause of its extinction in Ecton. It is not certain that any smith of the family succeeded to the ancient forge, though a son of Thomas appears to have inherited the little estate of thirty acres and the stone dwelling-house. The rec ords of Ecton show that the house and land were sold in 1740 to the lord of the manor, and that the house was then used for a village school. In 1766, when Dr. Franklin visited the home of his forefathers, he found a Thomas Franklin living in Leicestershire in impoverished circumstances, to whose maintenance he contributed for some years, and, in effect, adopted his only child, Sally. The old homestead was standing as late as the time of the American Revolution, but no trace of it now remains, and no Franklin dwells in the parish. The site of the house, however, is shown to inquiring strangers, and Ecton, we are told, values itself upon having been the residence of Dr. Franklin's ancestors. * The Tithes Book informs us that, two hundred years ago, there was a public house at Ecton called the World's End. There is still in the parish, a public house of that name. The village is, to this day, a quiet, sequestered nook, containing about 700 inhabitants. John Franklin, dyer, of Banbury, was probably as thriving a man, in his way, as his brother Thomas; for, besides entertaining his aged father in his house, he drew away, first, his brother Benjamin, and afterward, his brother Josiah, to learn his trade. Josiah Franklin, father of Dr. Franklin, was born at Ecton, in 1655. Having learned the trade of dyer, he established himself in that business at Banbury, and was married there, about his twenty "History and Antiquities of Ecton." first year. His brother Benjamin married, at the same town, "the daughter of a clergyman." These two brothers, apprenticed and wedded in Banbury, were brothers indeed; they cherished for each other an affection which time and distance never cooled. Three children were born to Josiah in Banbury: Elizabeth, born March 2, 1678; Samuel, born May 16, 1681; and Hannah, born May 25, 1783.* Charles II. was king of England then; the mean and profligate corrupter of his realm; promoter of false priests and persecutor of honest ones. Josiah Franklin and Benjamin, his well-beloved, and they alone, as it appears, of all their family, espoused the cause of the expelled pastors, abandoned the Church of England, and attended the Conventicles. The Conventicles were forbidden by law, were often disturbed, and to attend them placed a tradesman under the ban of the class whose good-will was most advantageous to him. About the year 1685, the year of the dissolute tyrant's death, Josiah Franklin bade farewell to his brother Benjamin, and to England; and, with wife and three little children, emigrated to Boston, accompanied by a number of his neighbors and fellow-dis senters. Upon reaching Boston, then in the fifty-sixth year of its existence, and containing but five or six thousand inhabitants, Josiah Franklin, finding little encouragement to practice his trade of dyer, set up in the business of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. The name of Josiah Franklin occurs once in the town records of Boston, under the date of April 27, 1691, when the town granted him liberty to erect a building eight feet square, near the South Meeting-House. Tradesmen were accustomed then to designate their places of business by objects, as well as by lettered signs. Thus, we learn from ancient advertisements, that clothing was sold at the sign of the Anchor, beer at the sign of the Mermaid, bread at the sign of the Golden Sheaf, and books at the sign of the Bible; but, generally, there was no similarity between the sign and the articles which it invited the public to purchase. To mark where he sold his soap and candles, Josiah Franklin fixed upon the sign of the Blue Ball; and the identical ball, of the size of a cocoa-nut, which once hung over his little shop, blue no longer, but bearing the name Josiah *Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary of New England," ii, 200. Franklin, and the date 1698, both legible, still hangs from the corner of Hanover and Union Streets, in Boston. A moderate prosperity rewarded his diligence and skill in Boston. His family, too, rapidly increased. August 23, 1685, was born that son, Josiah, who grieved his father so keenly by running away to sea, and was heard of no more for many years, and almost lured away, by his example, his youngest brother, Benjamin. Ann followed, born January 5, 1687. Then, Joseph, born February 6, 1688, who died in infancy. Next, another Joseph, born June 30, 1689. Soon after the birth of their seventh child, when Josiah Franklin was thirty-five years old, his wife died, leaving to his care six children, the eldest being eleven years of age. A young man, in such circumstances, with nothing but his own industry to depend upon for the support of his little brood, must make haste to find another mother for them. Josiah Franklin did so. He could not wait the customary year, but married so soon after the death of his wife, that the first child of his second spouse was born eighteen months after the birth of the first wife's last. His choice fell upon Abiah, youngest daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of the Island of Nantucket. Abiah Folger was twenty-two years of age when she gave her hand to the tallow-chandler of the Blue Ball. Of Peter Folger we may truly say, that he was worthy to be the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin. He is described by a contemporary as "a learned and godly Englishman," who acquired some of the Indian languages, and was much employed in teaching the Indian youth to read and write; well skilled also in surveying, and thus of great use to the colony in marking boundaries and laying out settlements. But he was still more honorably distinguished. He was one of the few of the early settlers of Massachusetts who felt the iniquity of persecuting the Baptists and Quakers for opinion's sake; and he lifted his voice against that vulgar heathenism. It was in the dark era of 1876, when Quakers and Baptists were still in peril of being publicly whipped, pilloried and branded, and banished into the wilderness, that honest Peter Folger wrote his rude doggerel poem, "A Looking-Glass for the Times," in which those outrages were pronounced to be the sin of New England, for which a just God was visiting her with Indian wars and massacres. Peter: Saith |