Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (71 page)

1
. Autobiography 18; Josiah Franklin to BF, May 26, 1739; editor’s note in Papers 2:229; Tourtellot 12. Franklin provides a footnote in the Autobiography showing how the noun and surname “franklin” was used in fifteenth-century England. Some analysts, as well as his French fans, have pointed out that Franquelin was a common name in the province of Picardie, France, in the fifteenth century, and his ancestors may have come from there. His father, Josiah Franklin, wrote, “Some think we are of a French extract which was formerly called Franks; some of a free line (frank line), a line free from that vassalage which was common to subjects in the days of old; some from a bird of long red legs.” Franklin’s own assessment that his surname came from the class of English freemen called
franklins
is almost surely the correct explanation, and just as important, it was the one he believed. The
Oxford English Dictionary
defines
franklin
as “A class of landowners, of free but not noble birth, and ranking next below the gentry.” It is derived from the Middle English word
frankeleyn,
meaning a freeman or freeholder. See Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale,” or “The Frankeleyn’s Tale,” www.librarius.com/ cantales.htm.

2
. Autobiography 20; Josiah Franklin to BF, May 26, 1739. The tale of the Bible and stool is in the letter from Josiah Franklin, but BF writes that he heard it from his uncle Benjamin. For a full genealogy, see Papers 1:xlix. The Signet edition of the Autobiography, based on a version prepared by Max Farrand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), uses a somewhat different phrase: “Our humble family early embraced the Reformation.”

3
. As David McCullough does in
Truman
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992) and Robert Caro in
The Path to Power
(New York: Knopf, 1982).

4
. Autobiography 20; “A short account of the Family of Thomas Franklin of Ecton,” by Benjamin Franklin the elder (uncle of BF), Yale University Library; Benjamin Franklin the Elder’s commonplace book, cited in Papers, vol. 1; Tourtellot 18.

5
. BF to David Hume, May 19, 1762.

6
. Tourtellot 42.

7
. John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630), www.winthrop society.org/charity.htm ; Perry Miller,
Errand into the Wilderness
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956). See also Andrew Delbanco,
The Puritan Ordeal
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Edmund Morgan,
Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea
(New York: NYU Press, 1963); Herbert Schneider,
The Puritan Mind
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958).

8
. Perry Miller, “Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards,” in
Major Writers of America
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1962), 84; Tourtellot 41; Cotton Mather, “A Christian at His Calling,” 1701, personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/mather.html; Poor Richard’s, 1736 (drawn from Aesop’s “Hercules and the Wagoner,” ca. 550
B.C.
, and Algernon Sidney’s
Discourses on Government,
1698, among other antecedents).

9
. Tourtellot 47–52; Nian Sheng Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah: Life of a Colonial Boston Tallow Chandler, 1657–1745” (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 2000) vol. 90, pt. 3.

10
. Lemay
Internet Doc
for 1657–1705; a drawing of the house is in Papers 1:4.

11
. Edmund Morgan,
The Puritan Family
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Mark Van Doren and Samuel Sewall, eds.,
Samuel Sewall’s Diary
(New York: Macy-Masius, 1927), 208.

12
. Autobiography 24.

13
. Autobiography 25, 91.

14
. Tourtellot 86; Lopez
Private
5–7.

15
. Alexander Starbuck,
The History of Nantucket
(New York: Heritage, 1998), 53, 91, cited in Tourtellot 104.

16
. Peter Folger, “A Looking Glass for the Times,” reprinted in Tourtellot 106; Autobiography 23.

17
. The genealogy of the Franklin and Folger families is in Papers 1:xlix.

18
. Autobiography 23. The Farrand/Signet edition uses the phrase: “that which was not honest could not be truly useful.”

19
. BF to Barbeu Dubourg, April 1773; Tourtellot 161.

20
. BF to Madame Brillon, Nov. 10, 1779 (known as the bagatelle of The Whistle); Autobiography 107; Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, in
Complete Works
(Paris: Bossange frères, 1823), 5:222, records it as a lesson learned from his family.

21
. Autobiography 24; Lopez
Private
7.

22
. Benjamin Franklin the elder, “To My Name, 1713,” Paper 1:3–5; BF to JM, July 17, 1771; Parton 32–38; Tourtellot 139–40; Autobiography 20.

23
. Autobiography 22; BF to JM, July 17, 1771; Lopez
Private,
9.

24
. Autobiography 22; Tourtellot 156. Boston Latin School was then generally called the South Grammar School.

25
. Temple
Writings,
1: 447.

26
. Autobiography 25–26.

27
. Autobiography 27;
Boston Post,
Aug. 7, 1940, cited in Papers 1:6–7. No authenticated copies of these two poems are known to have survived. The Franklin Papers 1:6–7 quote a few possible verses that may have been his.

28
. Lemay
Internet Doc
for 1719–20, citing
Early Boston Booksellers,
by George Emery Littlefield (Boston: Antiquarian Society, 1900), 150–55;Tourtellot 230–32. Franklin incorrectly states that the
Courant
was the second newspaper in Boston. See Yale Autobiography 67n.

29
. Perry Miller,
The New England Mind: From Colony to Province
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 344. See also E. Digby Baltzell,
Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia
(New York: Free Press, 1979).

30
. John Blake, “The Inoculation Controversy in Boston: 1721–1722,”
New England Quarterly
(1952): 489–506;
New England Courant,
Aug. 7, 1721, and following, ushistory.org/franklin/courant ; Tourtellot 252.

31
. Lemay
Internet Doc
for 1721; Perry Miller,
The New England Mind: From Colony to Province,
337.

32
. Autobiography 26. Analysis of Franklin’s childhood reading can be found in Parton 1:44–51, 60–72; Ralph Ketcham,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1965), 8–31; Tourtellot 166.

33
. Autobiography 27; BF to Samuel Mather, July 7, 1773, May 12, 1784; John Bunyan,
Pilgrim’s Progress,
1678, www.ccel.org/b/bunyan/progress/; Plutarch,
Parallel Lives,
ca.
A.D.
100, ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext96/plivs10.txt ; Cotton Mather,
Bonifacius,
also known as
Essays to Do Good
and
An Essay upon the Good,
1710, edweb.sdsu.edu/people/DKitchen/new_655/mather.htm ; Tourtellot 187–89.

34
. Daniel Defoe,
An Essay upon Projects,
1697, ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03/ esprj10.txt ; Tourtellot 185.

35
. Autobiography 28.

36
.
The Spectator,
Mar. 13, 1711, harvest.rutgers.edu/projects/spectator/mark up.html ; Autobiography 29.

37
.
The Spectator,
Mar. 1, 1711; Silence Dogood #1, Apr. 2, 1722; Silence Do-good #2, Apr. 16, 1722; Silence Dogood #3, Apr. 30, 1722; ushistory.org/frank lin/courant ; Papers 1:8–11. These dates, unlike others, are in the Old Style because they refer to editions of the
Courant
as dated at the time.

38
. Silence Dogood #4, May 14, 1722;
The Spectator,
Mar. 3, 1711.

39
. Autobiography 34;
New England Courant,
June 18, 25, July 2, 9, 1722. The excerpt is from
The London Journal.

40
.
New England Courant,
July 16, 23, 1722.

41
.
New England Courant,
Sept. 14, 1722, Feb. 11, 1723; Autobiography 33. Franklin compresses the chronology by recalling that his name went on top of the paper right after his brother’s release from jail, which was in July 1722; in fact, it occurred after James got into another dispute in January 1723. Oddly, his name remained atop the paper until at least 1726, which was three years after he had run away to Philadelphia. See
New England Courant,
June 25, 1726, and Yale Autobiography 70n.

42
. Autobiography 34–35.

43
. Claude-Anne Lopez, an editor of Franklin’s papers at Yale, discovered a scrap of paper on which Franklin, in 1783, jotted down some dates and places designed to pinpoint his itinerary of sixty years earlier. In the Norton edition of the Autobiography, J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall note that the only boat leaving Boston for New York that week was a sloop on September 25. Franklin’s editing of the “naughty girl” passage is noted in the Signet edition, 35. James Franklin’s forlorn ad appears in
New England Courant,
Sept. 30, 1723.

1
.
The Way to Health
was written by Thomas Tryon (1634–1703) and first published in 1683; Autobiography 29.

2
. Autobiography 49.

3
. Autobiography 38.

4
. Autobiography 79; Jonathan Yardley, review of Edmund Morgan’s
Benjamin Franklin,
in
Washington Post Book World,
Sept. 15, 2002, 2.

5
. Autobiography 41.

6
. Autobiography 52.

7
. Autobiography 42. Franklin later politely revised the phrase in his autobiography to read, “stared with astonishment.” Lemay/Zall Autobiography provides a complete look at the original manuscript and all of its revisions. The governors sent to Pennsylvania were sometimes referred to as lieutenant governors.

8
. Franklin recounted this tale twice to Mather’s son: BF to Samuel Mather, July 7, 1773, and May 12, 1784.

9
. Autobiography 104.

10
. Autobiography 48.

11
. Autobiography 54.

12
. Autobiography 55–58.

13
. “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain,” 1725, Papers 1:58; Campbell 101–3.

14
. Autobiography 70; Campbell 91–135.

15
. Autobiography 92; Poor Richard Improved, 1753; Papers 4:406. See also Alfred Owen Aldridge, “The Alleged Puritanism of Benjamin Franklin,” in Lemay
Reappraising
370; Aldridge
Nature;
Campbell 99. For good descriptions of the evolution of Franklin’s religious thought, see Walters; Buxbaum. See also chapter 7 of this book.

16
. Autobiography 63.

17
. “Plan of Conduct,” 1726, Papers 1:99; Autobiography 183.

18
. “Journal of a Voyage,” July 22–Oct. 11, 1726, Papers 1:72–99. The idea that “affability and sociability” were core tenets of the Enlightenment is explained well in Gordon Wood,
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
(New York: Random House, 1991), 215–6.

1
. Autobiography 64. For overviews of life in Philadelphia, see Carl Bridenbaugh and Jessica Bridenbaugh,
Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1942); E. Digby Baltzell,
Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia
(New York: Free Press, 1979). For a good overview of Franklin’s work as a printer, see C. William Miller,
Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Printing 1728–1766
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974).

2
. The chronology in the Autobiography is not quite correct. Denham took ill in the spring of 1727 but did not die until July 1728. Lemay/Zall Autobiography 41.

3
. Autobiography 69; Brands 87–89; Van Doren 71–73.

4
. Autobiography 71–79; Brands 91; Lemay/Zall Autobiography 49. The Quaker history was written by William Sewel. Franklin records that he published forty sheets of folio, which would have been 160 pages, but in fact he produced 178 pages and Keimer the remaining 532 pages.