their hob-nailed shoes, strongly preserved to us, in hardened clay, and now indestructible, if we take care of it.” 1 From the Register of Ecton Church Franklin found "that our poor honest Family were Inhabitants of that Village near 200 Years, as early as the Register begins." And from the same source, and from the gravestones from which he rubbed the obscuring moss, he learned, as he told his cousin, "that I am the youngest Son of the youngest Son of the youngest Son of the youngest Son for five Generations; whereby I find that had there originally been any Estate in the Family none could have stood a worse Chance of it." 2 At Ecton he heard the chimes play that had been erected by his uncle, Thomas Franklin, in the steeple of the parish church. He was diverted with stories of his uncle's ingenuity. It was said that he had found out an easy method of saving their village meadows from being drowned, as they used to be by the river, "which method is still in being, but when first proposed nobody could conceive how it could be; 'but however,' they said, 'if Franklin says he knows how to do it, it will be done."" This man who was looked upon "as something of a conjuror" died four years to a day before Franklin was born. "If Uncle Thomas had died," said William Franklin, "on the day of my father's birth one might have supposed a transmigration." 1 The book was deposited by Edward Everett in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Ecton was twelve miles from Sulgrave, the home of the Washingtons. The pink-coated huntsmen of the Washington family may often have stopped in Ecton to have their horses shod by the leatheraproned Franklins at the forge. 2 To Mary Fisher, July 31, 1758. Franklin acknowledged the courtesy of the Rev. Eyre Whalley, rector of the parish, and his wife who was a granddaughter of the famous Archdeacon Palmer, in helping him to a knowledge of his family history. VOL. XL Three of the brothers of this Thomas Franklin- John, Benjamin, and Josiah - removed from Ecton to Banbury and established themselves in the trade of dyers. Thomas Franklin, their father, in his old age followed his sons thither, and died there. Franklin found his gravestone in Banbury churchyard expressing that he was buried there, March 24, 1681/2. Josiah Franklin emigrated from Banbury to Boston in 1685 with Ann, his wife, and three children, and finding little encouragement to pursue his trade as a dyer, he set up in business as a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler at the sign of the Blue Ball. Four more children were born to him in four years in New England. His wife died in childbed in 1689, and he married six months later his second wife Abiah Folger, youngest daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of Nantucket. Benjamin was the tenth and youngest son in a family of seventeen children. He was born Sunday, January 6 (old style), 1706. Although he celebrated his birthday in later years upon the 17th of January, he never ceased to feel, as he said, "some regard for this sixth of January, as my old nominal birthday." The family home was then in Milk Street, a few steps from the door of Old South Church, and the child was carried over upon the day of its birth and baptized by Samuel Willard, pastor of the church and president of Harvard College. 1 Benjamin Franklin, the child's uncle, lonely and unfortunate, sent across the ocean occasional attempts at verse which were addressed to his little namesake and were read aloud in the family circle. The child replied in kind. Where1 To Deborah Franklin, January 6, 1773. upon Uncle Benjamin, delighted at this infantile lisping in numbers, wrote: ""Tis time for me to throw aside my pen, When hanging sleeves read, write, and rhyme like men, This forward spring foretells a plenteous crop ; For, if the bud bear grain, what will the top! If plenty in the verdant blade appear, What may we not soon hope for in the ear! If trees good fruit un'noculated bear, You may be sure 'twill afterward be rare. If fruits are sweet before they've time to yellow, How luscious will they be when they are mellow ! If first years' shoots such noble clusters send, What laden boughs, Engedi-like, may we expect in the end."1 A year at Boston Grammar School, and a year under a writing master, Mr. George Brownell, and Franklin's school days were over forever. At ten years old he was taken to help his father in his business. He remembered the benefits of his brief connection with the free grammar schools of Boston, and in his will acknowledged that he owed his first instructions in literature to them, and bequeathed to their managers or directors one hundred pounds sterling, the interest of which annually was to be laid out in silver medals and given as honorary rewards. Probably the love of books was with him 1 These lines were written in 1713. The elder Benjamin Franklin came over to New England and settled in Dr. Coleman's church in Boston. Dr. Coleman preached his funeral sermon from the text "Mark the perfect man." Josiah Franklin was a member of the Rev. Dr. Sewall's church. He died December 1, 1744, æt. 89. His wife died 1752, æt. 85. See "The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles," by F. B. Dexter, N.Y., 1901, Vol. II, p. 375, for reminiscences of Jane Mecom (née Franklin). 2 "Advertisements. At the House of George Brownell in Second Street, (formerly the House of Mr. John Knight, deceas'd) is taught, Reading, Writing, Cyphering, Dancing, Plain-work, Marking, with Variety of Needle-work. Where also Scholars may board." From The Pennsylvania Gazette. before he went to his first school, for he says that his readiness in learning to read must have been very early "as I do not remember when I could not read." His sister speaks of him as a Bible reader at five years old. When still very young reading was a confirmed habit which soon became a passion. He devoured the dull and profitless contents of his father's little library of polemic divinity. Not even the "dusty death" of this collection could kill his love of books. Among the ministerial folios was a copy of Plutarch's Lives, which he read with delight, and Defoe's "Essay on Projects," and Mather's "Essays to do Good." A few years before his death he wrote to the son of Cotton Mather that the reading of the mutilated copy of his father's little book gave him such a turn of thinking as to have an influence upon his conduct throughout life, "for I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good than on any other kind of reputation; and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book." He has described in his "Autobiography" the kind of books that fell in his way. He bought Bunyan's works and sold them to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections. He borrowed books from Mr. Matthew Adams, a tradesman, and became a vegetarian in order to save a little with which to buy books. He read attentively and intensely, with his faculties all awake. Books influenced him greatly. His vegetarianism was suggested by a book written by Dr. Thomas Tryon, commending that kind of diet. Xenophon's "Memorabilia" caused him to adopt the Socratic method of dispute. From Shaftesbury and Collins he caught the measles of scepticism. Before he was sixteen he had bought and studied Cocker's Arithmetic, 1 To Samuel Mather, May 12, 1784. Greenwood's Grammar, the Port Royal Logic, and Locke on the "Human Understanding." With these to steady his mind, and Bunyan, Defoe, and Addison to excite his imagination and enrich his language, he had the materials for solid and efficient education. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to his brother James who, in the next year (1719), began to print the Boston Gazette, the second newspaper in America. In seven months' time the paper changed ownership, and Philip Masgrave, the new proprietor, employed another printer. Partly in resentment and partly from a belief that there was room for more than one newspaper in America, James Franklin issued upon the 7th of August, 1721, the first number of The New England Courant, the fourth newspaper to be published in the colonies. The printer promised that it should be issued "once a Fortnight and out of meer kindness to my Brotherwriters I intend now and then to be (like them) very very dull; for I have a strong Fancy, that unless I am sometimes flat and low, this paper will not be very grateful to them." The dulness and respectability of the News-Letter and the Gazette were impudently and mercilessly satirized. The publisher solicited his friends to favour him "with some short Piece, Serious, Sarcastick, Ludicrous, or otherways amusing; or sometimes professedly Dul (to accomodate some of his Acquaintance) that this Courant may be of the more universal Use." The older journals replied indignantly, stigmatizing the new venture as "frothy and fulsome," and inveighing against the "Ribaldry" of the "Dull cold Skul" of its "Undertaker." Young men of good family and good education, some of them students of medicine and all of them brilliant, reckless, and irreverent the very Mohocks of litera |