Franklin: Founding Father in American History

Benjamin Franklin was a very influential, founding father in American history. He was a skilled author, salesmen, scientist, inventor, diplomat, and publisher. He invented many advanced things and helped early America thrive.

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts. Franklinr's was eighth and the first son out of seventeen siblings. His father was a candle and a soap maker and did not make a lot of money. Franklin learned how to read and write at a very young age. He spent one year in elementary school and another year with a private teacher. His education ended at 10, but he still kept on learning. Franklin taught himself the basic algebra, geometry, grammar, logic, and even science. After he ended his professional schooling he was apprenticed by his older brother James at age 12 as a printer. He then mastered the art of printing and thought of pursuing it as his career. At the age of 17, Franklin ran away and decided to start an apprenticeship in Philadelphia where he started work as a printer.

Franklin worked at various printers in London, England, and Philadelphia. He found a job very fast in Philadelphia. While working at the shop Franklin decided to start writing essays for his brothers daily newspaper, under the pseudonym Silence Dogood. Franklin would slip his essays under the printing shop door so that nobody would know that it was him. Years after, skipping from printing shop to printing shop, he became the owner of his own newspaper company, The New England Courant. Many citizens contributed to the stories in his newspaper. In Philadelphia, Franklinr's good friend James Ralph introduced him to Deborah Read. The next week Franklin and Ralph set off to London in search of opportunity.

Franklin found a job very quickly in London as a writer. He wrote many books while staying in London. His books include A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity and Pleasure and Pain (1725). He also wrote a pamphlet inspired by William Wollastonr's pamphlet, The Religion of Nature Delineated. It was a very meaningful and powerful pamphlet. Franklin later disliked the pamphlet so he burned every single copy except one, that one he would keep for himself. By 1776 Franklin was tired of London and wanted to go somewhere else. Then Thomas Denham, who was a Quaker merchant, offered him a job in his store in Philadelphia with a hope of fat commissions in the West Indian trade. Franklin then decided to return home. When he returned home Benjamin Franklin decided to marry Deborah Read. They together had three kids, William, Sarah, and Franky. Sarah sadly died at the age of four due to illness and later Deborah died in 1774.

Benjamin Franklin was very interested in the sciences, he loved studying about how things were made and how they worked. One winter day Franklin and three of his friends decided to start investigating electricity and how it worked. He and his friends conducted many experiments and spent lots of time researching. Franklin would send reports and ideas to Peter Collinson, his Quaker partner in London. In 1751, Franklin and Collinsonr's papers were published in Experiments and Observations and Electricity. One of Franklinr's most famous experiments was him flying a kite in a thunderstorm. He had many findings of how electricity works.

According to britannica.com, He created the differences between insulators and conductors. He even invented a battery for storing electrical charges. , invented new words for the science of electricity such as, conductor, condense and electrify, showed that electricity was a single fluid with positive and negative charges and not two kinds of fluids, demonstrated that the plus and minus charges, or states of electrification of bodies, had to occur in exactly equal amounts.

In 1748, Franklin joined the Philadelphia city council. Then in 1751, he became a city alderman and a member of the Pennsylvania assembly. Franklin had big thoughts for this country and how it could be like England. In 1757, he went to England as the head of the Pennsylvania assembly, in order to get the family of William Penn to allow the colonial legislature to tax their ungranted lands. But Franklin and some of his colleagues had a different plan. They wanted to make the Penn family the rulers Pennsylvania colony and make that colony a royal providence. He was unsuccessful but tried to keep on pushing. When he arrived back in Philadelphia he was immediately elected to the second continental congress. Many people disliked him because he was a loyalist but he never stopped fighting. Franklin did a lot of work during those years and helped start the first American government.

He died on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More than 200,000 people attended his funeral and he was buried at Philadelphia's Christ Church Cemetery. In Franklinr's will, he left a lot of money which was later used to start a science museum and fun school scholarships. Now 200 years later Benjamin Franklin appears on the $100, and in towns and schools in the U.S.

Benjamin Franklin invented many things and helped discover new things. He also wrote many detailed books and many newspaper articles. Most importantly he helped start the American government and risk his life for his country.

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