Benjamin Franklin Essay

Benjamin Franklin
“All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.”- Benjamin Franklin
(Qtd. in Brainy Quotes) Benjamin Franklin is known as one of the “founding fathers” of America. He was a businessman, writer, and a member of various political groups. His writings are an important part in American literature. Franklin was brought into this world on January 17, 1706; his parents, Josiah and Abiah, raised him and his sixteen siblings in Boston. While growing up, Franklin’s favorite place to have fun was the Charles River. “In the evening when the workmen were gone home, I assembled a number of my playfellows, and we worked diligently like so many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone, until we brought them all to make our little wharf (Isaacson).” When he was eight, Franklin was sent to Boston Latin School in order to prepare him for Harvard. He was the smartest in his class and eventually excelled to the next grade early. After one year, he was pulled out of the school because his father could not afford to send Franklin to Harvard and take care of him and his younger siblings. When he was ten, he went to work in his father’s soap shop; he went to work as a printer’s apprentice with his older brother James when he was twelve. After helping his brother compose pamphlets and set type which was grueling work, young Franklin would sell their products in the streets (US history.org).In 1721, Franklin’s brother started The New England Courant. It is considered the first “newspaper” of Boston even though there were two papers in the city before his Courant (US history.org). Since his brother would not let him write for the newspaper, young Franklin started writing letters with the signature of a fictional widow named Silence Dogood. Silence Dogood was a slightly prudish widowed woman from a rural area, created by a spunky unmarried Boston teenager who had never spent a night outside the city (Isaacson). These essays are notable in history because they were the first examples of the genre of American humor. The letters spoke about religion, hypocrisy, and other things. After thirteen Dogood letters, Franklin confessed to his older brother. His brother did not like this and was very abusive to him. In 1723 when he was seventeen, Franklin ran away from home and rode a boat from Boston to New York in order to search for a job as a printer. Since he could not find a job in New York, he went to Philadelphia and became an apprentice printer. The governor of Pennsylvania tricked Franklin into going to England; therefore, he spent months in London doing printing work. Before he left for London, he lived with his childhood sweetheart, Deborah Read, and her family. While he was in London, Read married another man. Upon his return to Philadelphia, he became a printer’s helper again. Since he was tired of being a printer’s helper, he opened his own printing shop by borrowing money (McCormick). In 1728, he fathered a son named William; William’s mother is unknown to this day. In 1729, he bought the Pennsylvania Gazette. His newspaper soon became the most successful in the colonies (US history.org). In 1730, he married his childhood friend, Deborah Read, whose first husband ran off. Although William Franklin was not her biological son, Mrs. Franklin raised him as her own. The Franklin’s brought three children into the world: Francis, Sarah, and Sally. Franklin also ran a book store along with his printing shop. Poor Richard’s Almanac, which Franklin began publishing at the end of 1732, combined the two goals of his doing-well-by-doing-good philosophy: the making of money and the promotion of virtue (Isaacson). The writing’s main characters were Poor Richard Saunders and his wife, Bridget. In Poor

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