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Benjamin Franklin Biography

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1757) was born in Boston and was a printer and publisher by trade. He published Poor Richard's Almanac and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin made many contributions to civic causes and science. He served as a colonial representative and played important roles in the development of the United States, including signing the Declaration of Independence and negotiating the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. Franklin was a prolific inventor, scientist, politician, and diplomat who played a key role in the founding of the United States.

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58 views3 pages

Benjamin Franklin Biography

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1757) was born in Boston and was a printer and publisher by trade. He published Poor Richard's Almanac and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin made many contributions to civic causes and science. He served as a colonial representative and played important roles in the development of the United States, including signing the Declaration of Independence and negotiating the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. Franklin was a prolific inventor, scientist, politician, and diplomat who played a key role in the founding of the United States.

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S Ivan Pratama
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Benjamin Franklin ( 1706-1757 )

A Short Biography

Franklin was born in 1706 at Boston. He was the tenth son of a soap
and candlemaker. He received some formal education but was
principally self-taught. After serving an apprenticeship to his father
between the ages of 10 and 12, he went to work for his half-brother
James, a printer. In 1721 the latter founded the New England
Courant, the fourth newspaper in the colonies. Benjamin secretly
contributed 14 essays to it, his first published writings.

In 1723, because of dissension with his half-brother, Franklin moved to


Philadelphia, where he obtained employment as a printer. He spent
only a year there and then sailed to London for 2 more years. Back in
Philadelphia, he rose rapidly in the printing industry. He published The
Pennsylvania Gazette (1730-48), which had been founded by another man in 1728, but his most
successful literary venture was the annual Poor Richard 's Almanac (1733-58). It won a
popularity in the colonies second only to the Bible, and its fame eventually spread to Europe.

Meantime, in 1730 Franklin had taken a common-law wife, Deborah Read, who was to bear him
a son and daughter, and he also apparently had children with another nameless woman out of
wedlock. By 1748 he had achieved financial independence and gained recognition for his
philanthropy and the stimulus he provided to such civic causes as libraries, educational
institutions, and hospitals. Energetic and tireless, he also found time to pursue his interest in
science, as well as to enter politics.

Franklin served as clerk (1736-51) and member (1751-64) of the colonial legislature and as
deputy postmaster of Philadelphia (1737-53) and deputy postmaster general of the colonies
(1753-74). In addition, he represented Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress (1754), called to
unite the colonies during the French and Indian War. The congress adopted his "Plan of Union,"
but the colonial assemblies rejected it because it encroached on their powers.

During the years 1757-62 and 1764-75, Franklin resided in England, originally in the capacity of
agent for Pennsylvania and later for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. During the latter
period, which coincided with the growth of colonial unrest, he underwent a political
metamorphosis. Until then a contented Englishman in outlook, primarily concerned with
Pennsylvania provincial politics, he distrusted popular movements and saw little purpose to be
served in carrying principle to extremes. Until the issue of parliamentary taxation undermined
the old alliances, he led the Quaker party attack on the Anglican proprietary party and its
Presbyterian frontier allies. His purpose throughout the years at London in fact had been
displacement of the Penn family administration by royal authority-the conversion of the
province from a proprietary to a royal colony.

It was during the Stamp Act crisis that Franklin evolved from leader of a shattered provincial
party's faction to celebrated spokesman at London for American rights. Although as agent for
Pennsylvania he opposed by every conceivable means the enactment of the bill in 1765, he did
not at first realize the depth of colonial hostility. He regarded passage as unavoidable and
preferred to submit to it while actually working for its repeal.

Franklin's nomination of a friend and political ally as stamp distributor for Pennsylvania,
coupled with his apparent acceptance of the legislation, armed his proprietary opponents with
explosive issues. Their energetic exploitation of them endangered his reputation at home until
reliable information was published demonstrating his unabated opposition to the act. For a
time, mob resentment threatened his family and new home in Philadelphia until his tradesmen
supporters rallied. Subsequently, Franklin's defense of the American position in the House of
Commons during the debates over the Stamp Act's repeal restored his prestige at home.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in May 1775 and immediately became a distinguished


member of the Continental Congress. Thirteen months later, he served on the committee that
drafted the Declaration of Independence. He subsequently contributed to the government in
other important ways, including service as postmaster general, and took over the duties of
president of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention.

But, within less than a year and a half after his return, the aged statesman set sail once again
for Europe, beginning a career as diplomat that would occupy him for most of the rest of his
life. In the years 1776-79, as one of three commissioners, he directed the negotiations that led
to treaties of commerce and alliance with France, where the people adulated him, but he and
the other commissioners squabbled constantly. While he was sole commissioner to France
(1779-85), he and John Jay and John Adams negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended
the War for Independence.

Back in the United States, in 1785 Franklin became president of the Supreme Executive Council
of Pennsylvania. At the Constitutional Convention, though he did not approve of many aspects
of the finished document and was hampered by his age and ill-health, he missed few if any
sessions, lent his prestige, soothed passions, and compromised disputes.

In his twilight years, working on his Autobiography, Franklin could look back on a fruitful life as
the toast of two continents. Energetic nearly to the last, in 1787 he was elected as first
president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery-a cause to which
he had committed himself as early as the 1730s. His final public act was signing a memorial to
Congress recommending dissolution of the slavery system. Shortly thereafter, in 1790 at the
age of 84, Franklin passed away in Philadelphia and was laid to rest in Christ Church Burial
Ground.

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