Why? In 1727 Potter had ran away to the West Indies escaping creditors. Young Franklin discovered a volume of The Spectatorfeaturing Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steeles famous periodical essays, which had appeared in England in 171112and saw in it a means for improving his writing. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine He had intended to have my Child inoculated, as soon as he should have recovered sufficient Strength from a Flux with which he had been long afflicted.. B.R. Franklin apparently proposed marriage, but she declined in deference to her deceased husband. It was a small matter, but Benjamin was incensed. One problem, though the couple's only son was not inoculated, contracted smallpox, and ultimately died. And when Franklin sailed for London in 1757 he made no secret of his ambivalence about leaving his 14-year-old daughter with Deborah. Benjamin Franklin Marriage Letter From an Original Letter to John Alleyne, Esquire, As it Appears in the Pennsylvania Packet, October 30, 1789 Long before Dear Abby and Ann Landers, Benjamin Franklin was offering advice to the lovelorn. Reading Benjamin Franklin's letter in the year 2013, I have to agree with you, a lot of the things he wrote about marriage in the year 1745 appear to be funny to us today, because it just isn't true. I would have been burned at the stake for being a redhead back then since they thought redheads were witches! No one yet understood that it spread when people inhaled an invisible virus. (Franklin immortalized his wifes fiery personality in various fictional counterparts, including Bridget Saunders, wife of Poor Richard. In October 1765, Deborah Franklin sent a gushing letter to her husband, who was in London on business for the Pennsylvania legislature. In classic Franklin fashion, he doesnt say. All rights reserved. He deposited this material in a vial and brought it to the home of the person to be inoculated. However, lets face it, there are a lot of older women who never evolve and remain stuck in their own fears. Created by Meks. God made it this way, in his words he said woman is not without the man or man with out the woman. He was appointed the first postmaster of Philadelphia and was heavily involved in social and political affairs that would eventually lead to the establishment of the United States. I was always interested in books about finances, which caused me to discover Ben's "The Way to Wealth.". William Franklin was Benjamin's first child and his only son to survive into adulthood. Perform without fail what you resolve. Wherein a Practicable Plan is laid down for Obtaining and Securing Conjugal Felicity. Your Reasons against entering into it at present, appear to me not well-founded. Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson (2003). * Why I Got PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome) Since I'm Not In The Military, * Top 41 Lessons Blogging Teaches About Life, * What Is Empty Nest Syndrome And The Words She Said As Comfort. Weel, a but one. | READ MORE. By the spring of 1724 he was enjoying the companionship of other young men with a taste for reading, and he was also being urged to set up in business for himself by the governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith. 1744 . . As far as older woman and sex go, we never change. At Keiths suggestion, Franklin returned to Boston to try to raise the necessary capital. Not until December 30 did he break his silence, in a stunning 137-word note at the end of that weeks Gazette. In 1721 James Franklin founded a weekly newspaper, the New-England Courant, to which readers were invited to contribute. Speaking of ghosts. Benjamin Franklin said, "Be assured, a Woman's Power, as well as Happiness, has no other Foundation but . I wonder if he spelled them right for 1748 or if he was like my Mom and daughter! He had three children, including William Franklin, who was Colonial Governor of New Jersey, from 1763 to 1776. Reflections on Courtship and Marriage: in Two Letters to a Friend. This event profoundly saddened the Franklins. Now you may argue with God but not me. LOL. That scenarioparents unable to agree on inoculation for their childwas precisely the one Ben Franklin fixed on two decades after his sons death, when he wrote about impediments to the procedures public acceptance. Benjamin Franklin has written many quotes about Marriage. If God expected me to stay married just so that I could say I was married, then he would not be the God of love that I know Him to be. Check out these top 15 facts that helped shape the history of America. And when she became pregnant with their first child, near the beginning of 1732, she had reason to hope she might have one. Franklin agreed to take in the child as his own. The name of the mother remains a mystery. Benjamin Franklin (2007). But the rest, spot on, Ben, baby. His 1742 ballad in praise of her, as Lemay points out, touched upon every aspect of her domestic skills except motherhoodeven though she had mothered William Franklin since infancy and, shortly after Frankys death, had taken in young James Franklin Jr., the son of Bens deceased brother. An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife. The parents declined to pay and the relationship was terminated as well as his friendship with Thomas Godfrey. After six months, he and the young woman were in love. Records Commission. From the outset, his father hinted otherwise. The inoculation issue was over, but Franklin let his anger boil over in other ways, and this is one example. I thought so too. Everyone, she wrote, thinks as much as though it had been drawn for him. For the better part of the next two years Deborahs letters to Benjamin focused on the health, charm and virtues of the grandson who resembled her dead son. Franklin argued in his essay that since human beings have no real freedom of choice, they are not morally responsible for their actions. Method and Success of Inoculating the Small-Pox in New England, 1722. Who Said It? By the late 1750s, Benjamin Franklin had established himself as a successful printer, publisher, and writer. Just as people change over time so do words. Franklin didnt return Benny Bache to his parents for nine years. Mulligan: Franklin, of course, never sent "Fart . -Joseph Campbell Resolve to perform what you ought. He was buried beside Deborah at Christ Church Cemetery in Philadelphia. Franklin realized, as all the Founders did, that writing competently was such a rare talent in the 18th century that anyone who could do it well immediately attracted attention. That way, if Rodgers returned, Deborah couldn't be charged with bigamy (which brought a life sentence). . One of the foremost of theFounding Fathers,he helped draft theDeclaration of Independenceand was one of its signers, he represented the United States in France during theAmerican Revolution, and he was a delegate to theConstitutional Convention. He also became more empatheticits hard to imagine he would have written an essay like On the Death of Infants, which was inspired by the death of an acquaintances child, had he not been enraptured by his own son and fearful lest a similar fate should befall him. His father, Josiah Franklin (1657-1745), a native of England, was a candle and soap maker who married twice and had 17 children . In 1736 Francis, who was 4 years old, died from small pox. The happy State of Matrimony is, undoubtedly, the surest and most lasting Foundation of Comfort and Love . The writings in Fart Proudly reveal the rogue who lived peaceably within the philosopher and statesman. SOURCES Deborah Read Benjamin Franklin Wikipedia: Benjamin Franklin Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Clearly Franklin believed he had had a choice and had chosen wrong. Poor Richard's Almanack, p.17, Barnes & Noble Publishing. The procedure was a precursor to modern-day vaccination. A Century of Printing: The Issues of the Press of Pennsylvania, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0030, National Historical Publications and Because the Compunction is less. He had planned to use the dowry to pay the remaining debt for the printing house which added to 100 pounds. Avoid, both before and after marriage, all thoughts of managing your husband, he advised wives. ( 337 ) $9.99. Wherein a Practicable Plan is laid down for Obtaining and Securing Conjugal Felicity. Copyright 2009-2021 The Redhead Riter | Commenting Policy | Disclosure | Disclaimer | Privacy |, A Short Motivational Thought, Wish And Quote. In May 1771, on a kinder note, he wrote: I am much pleased with the little Histories you give me of your fine Boy.I hope he will be spared, and continue the same Pleasure and Comfort to you, and that I shall ere long partake with you in it., Over time, Benjamin, too, came to regard the grandson he had yet to lay eyes on as a kind of reincarnation of his dead son. Franklin was a great manscientist, publisher, political theorist, diplomat. Perhaps out of compassion, few of Franklins contemporaries questioned his explanation for not inoculating Franky or asked why he had gone so quiet on the procedure in the months before his son died. Benjamin Franklin His Autobiography 1706-1757 Events of his Life [Ending, as it does, with the year 1757, the autobiography leaves important facts un-recorded. public. 6. Benjamin Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, soaper, and candlemaker. Did he envy it? Franklin had been obliged to help print attacks against it in his brothers newspaper, but the procedures success won him over. And yet she remained legally married to him; a woman could self-divorce, as Deborah had done in returning to her mothers home, but she could not remarry with church sanction. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. Survivors were often blind, physically or mentally disabled and horribly disfigured. A Benjamin Franklin Reader, p.53, Simon and Schuster, There is a mistake in the text of this quote, Occupation: Founding Father of the United States. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. At 12 he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. Leonard W. Labaree. He was telling a young man how to choose a mistress, but while doing so, he talked about the wisdom of marrying and the qualities of older women. . Over 35 years of marriage, Benjamin Franklin had indirectly praised Deborahs work ethic and common sense through wife characters in his Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richards Almanac. Benjamin Franklin, also called Ben Franklin, pseudonym Richard Saunders, (born January 17 [January 6, Old Style], 1706, Boston, Massachusetts [U.S.]died April 17, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. V rokoch 1779 - 1785 psobil ako prv americk vyslanec vo Franczsku (nahradil ho Thomas Jefferson ). Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Simon & Shuster, New . Marriage more than 15 Yrs (to Deborah Reed 1730-1774) Family : Relationship : Number of Marriages (one) Family : Parenting : Kids 1-3 (two sons, one daughter) Powered by WordPress. He read these Spectator papers over and over, copied and recopied them, and then tried to recall them from memory. Franklin was certainly grateful to be married, but treated his wife more like a roommate than a helpmate in life. In 1722 he wrote a series of 14 essays signed Silence Dogood in which he lampooned everything from funeral eulogies to the students of Harvard College. the Cause of all good Order in the World, and what alone preserves it from the utmost Confusion. Im sure it has nothing to do with my mother or daughter. In public, Franklin himself took the blame for not inoculating Franky. He considered becoming an itinerant teacher of swimming, but, when Thomas Denham, a Quaker merchant, offered him a clerkship in his store in Philadelphia with a prospect of fat commissions in the West Indian trade, he decided to return home. In 1776 he insisted that the 7-year-old accompany him on his diplomatic mission to France. He was General Crook's lead scout at the Battle of the Rosebud participated in the Slim . By 1726 Franklin was tiring of London. In 1721 Cotton Matherthe man who had stumbled upon the idea of inoculation and then pushed it on the doctors of Boston, declaring it infalliblehad stalled for two weeks before approving his teenage sons inoculation, knowing all the while that Sammy Mathers Harvard roommate was sick with smallpox. And brought it to the West Indies escaping creditors were in love been obliged to help print attacks it. Bache to his brother James, a Short Motivational thought, Wish and.. 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