"As there is scarce any kind of Civil Knowledge more necessary or profitable than History; (which is therefore very aptly stiled by the Ancients, The Mistress of Life,) so of all sorts of History there is none so useful as that which unlocking the Cabinet, brings forth the Letters, private Instructions, Consultations and Negotiations of Ministers of State; for then we see things in a clear light, stript of all their paints and disguisings, and discover those hidden Springs of Affairs, which give motion to all the vast Machines and stupendous Revolutions of Princes and Kingdoms, that make such a noise on the Theatre of the World, and amaze us with unexpected shiftings of Scenes and daily Vicissitudes."— The Memoires of Sir James Melvil, 1683. CHAPTER I ORIGIN AND EARLY STRUGGLES Ar a certain exhibition of historical portraits Thomas Carlyle, it is said, was seen absorbed in the contemplation of a picture of Benjamin Franklin. A group of spectators, attracted by curiosity, gathered about him, to whom the sage of Chelsea said, as he pointed to the portrait: "There is the father of all the Yankees." It would seem that Carlyle expressed the sentiment and opinion of mankind; for at the present time, two hundred years after the birth of Franklin, the world has united in spontaneous and splendid celebration of his vast achievements and matchless public service. His history is the story of a struggle; it is the record of a life that began in humble surroundings and ended in splendour; it contains, therefore, the substance of the tales that have chiefly interested the world. The story is universally known, for his autobiography is the most famous work of the kind in the English language. Every one is familiar with the incidents of his flight from Boston - fugitive from the fist of a choleric brother - how he was nearly drowned in New York Bay, how he walked from Perth Amboy to Burlington, fifty miles through ever-during rain, how he took boat at Burlington upon an October afternoon, and landed at the foot of Market Street in Philadelphia upon the following Sunday morning, how he walked the quiet streets of the sober city, - a ridiculous figure, munching a roll, how he found shelter the first night in the strange city at the old Crooked Billet in Water Street. The strange mutations of life! This vagrant, adventurous lad, ragged, travel-stained, awkward, with shirts and stockings in his pockets and a Dutch dollar his whole stock of cash this humble soap-boiler's son was destined to become the most conspicuous and admired figure of two continents, to stand before kings, to converse with scholars, and to receive every honour that the most venerable academies of learning could bestow, "And moving up from high to higher Become on Fortune's crowning slope The centre of a world's desire." His life covers so completely the occurrences of the eighteenth century, and comprehends so entirely its scientific and political progress that it seems impossible to confine the narrative within reasonable and readable limits. Fortunately it is unnecessary to encroach upon the province of the "Autobiography." There the story of his life is told, until the year 1757, with admirable truthfulness and thoroughness, in Franklin's inimitably easy and vivid way. Beyond that epoch many biographers have essayed to complete the narrative, but much yet remains to be done. I purpose, in as few words as possible, to review the events of his early life, and to try to complete from his literary remains and the discoveries of recent research the history of one who lived long and variously in the world, and whose life is the most picturesque and profitable that has yet been lived in America. Franklin was greatly interested in his family history. It was not his way to value a man for his antecedents, but he knew the worth of genealogy, and he visited all the places where his ancestors had lived, and he traced his lineage with much time and care. He even adopted the family coat of arms two lions' heads, two doves, and a dolphin — and with a decent sense of propriety in such a case he permitted his brother John to use it as a book plate, but he would not allow it to be put upon the cakes of crown soap by the making of which the family turned an honest penny. When a person in Königsberg, Anna Sophia Susanna de Bohlen, née Franklin, wrote to him to claim relationship, saying that her father, who had taken service in the Prussian army, was the eldest son of John Franklin, born at Woodhouse near Abingdon, Franklin replied that he had exact accounts of every person of his family from 1555; and courteously added, "It would be a pleasure to me to discover a relation in Europe possessing the amiable sentiments expressed in your letter, I assure you I should not disown the meanest.' His notes upon the family history from 1555 to his own generation, together with his abstracts of church records and a pedigree chart of his own making have recently come into the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.2 He acquired his information in the summer of 1758 when, after attending the Commencement ceremonies at Cambridge, he visited Wellingborough where he found his cousin Mary Fisher-the wife of Richard Fisher, a grazier and tanner, 3 1 To Madame de Bohlen, November 21, 1781. 2 See "Franklin as a genealogist,” by John W. Jordan, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April, 1899. 3 The Lenox Library has a letter from Benjamin Franklin (uncle) to R. Fisher, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, dated "Boston, 17 March, 1724," notifying him that about the 15th of November he had sent him a package of books by his nephew, Captain Dowse, "my brother's son-in-law.” the only child of Thomas Franklin, his father's eldest brother. She was then past four score years and could recall the departure of his father with his wife and children for America (1685). The ancestral home of the Franklins was at Ecton in Northamptonshire, three miles from Wellingborough. For two hundred years of authentic record, and probably for many forgotten generations of which the church registers know nothing, the Franklins had lived upon their little patrimonial plot of thirty freehold acres and practised the art of agriculture and the craft of blacksmithing. They were plain, sturdy, liberty-loving people who shod horses, and mended and greased coach wheels. Stern livers were they all: fearing God and fearless of man. Mary Fisher wrote to Franklin that though the family "never made any great Figure in this County, yet it did what was much better, it acted that Part well in which Providence had placed it and for 200 Years all the Descendants of it have lived with Credit, and are to this Day without any Blot on their Escutcheon."' Carlyle sent to Edward Everett "a strange old brown manuscript," a tithes-book of the parish of Ecton, in which are many notices of pecuniary transactions in which the Franklins were concerned. "Here they are," says Carlyle, "their forge-hammers yet going — renting so many 'yard lands' of Northamptonshire church-soil-keeping so many sheep, etc., etc., little conscious that one of the demigods was about to proceed out of them. I flatter myself these old plaster-cast representations of the very form and pressure of the primeval (or at least prior-eval) Franklins will be interesting in America; there is the very stamp, as it were, of the black knuckles, of 1 Mary Fisher to Franklin, August 14, 1758. |