The life and times — of — benjamin franklin, — by — joseph franklin, and

CHAPTER I.

Weams, in his biography of Dr. Franklin, gives a very different definition and origin of the word. He says; — "In days of Auld Lang Syne, their neighbors from the continent made a descent on the 'fast anchored isle,' and compelled the hardy, red-ochred natives to buckle to their yoke. Among the visitors were some regiments of Franks, who distinguished themselves by their valor, and still more by their politeness to the vanquished, and especially to the females. By this amiable gallantry, the Franks acquired such glory among the brave islander, that whenever any of their own people achieved anything uncommonly handsome, he was called, by way of compliment, a Franklin; i. e., a little Frank."

But it is most probable that the word "franklin," in the sense of "freeholder," was the word, which, by some means unknown now, in the course of time came to be applied as the name of a family. This family multiplied, and has continued in England to our day. The reader will readily recall Sir John Franklin, who was lost in an effort to explore the Northern Arctic Ocean.

At the close of the seventeenth century, the family was introduced into the United States by the father of Benjamin Franklin, the philosopher. Josiah Franklin was an English non-conformist, who emigrated to the United States to get away from persecution. He had been a dyer in England, but in this country was a tallow chandler and soap-boiler. He had a family of seventeen children, Dr. Franklin being the youngest but two.¹

Dr. Franklin had a son and a daughter, or step-children who bore his name. His son's name was William Franklin. Ho was the last royal governor of New Jersey, and in the American Revolution adhered to the Crown. During, or at the close of the war, he. moved to England, where he died, leaving one son, William Temple Franklin. The latter, like his? grandfather, was a printer and author, but without great distinction. He died in Paris, in 1873, and leaving no son, was the last descendant of Dr. Franklin who bore his name.

The different branches of the family throughout the United States trace their ancestral lines back to Dr. Franklin's brothers.

John Franklin, a full brother of Dr. Franklin (being a son of Josiah Franklin by his second wife, Abiah Falger), was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1703. He resided in Boston until after a son was born to him, whom he named for Dr. Franklin's elder half-brother, James. James Franklin married Hannah Wilson, of Salem, Massachusetts. To these parents was born a son, who received the name of both his father and mother—Wilson Franklin. Wilson became a family name. Wilson Franklin served as a soldier in the Revolutionary army. He was in the battle of Bennington

While residing on Salt Run, Joseph Franklin was a farmer, a miller, and a workman in wood, the demand in each of these directions being so moderate that he could afford to divide his energies. The mill was a small affair, located on a "wet weather" stream. When the water ran too low, which was often in that hill country, the mill was run by horse power, four horses being usually employed. The grinding consisted wholly of the "grists" that the neighbors brought to him to be ground for their home use. On the farm was only a small "clearing," enough for a little meadow, a wheat-field, corn-field, a "truck-patch," and a pasture; so that with the labor of his growing sons, the work of the farm, aside from the clearing of fresh ground, was soon done, leaving time [[Page: 3]]for cabinet work. He made chairs, tables, bedsteads and coffins. For a long time most of the coffins for a large district were made by him. A circumstance in connection with his coffinmaking shows that Mr. Franklin and his wife were not wholly free from the superstitions that were common among the people of that day. The workshop was a room of the dwelling-house. The tools were hung upon a wall which separated the shop from the room in which they slept. Among the tools was a fine hand-saw, which he used a great deal in making coffins. They would occasionally hear a ringing of that saw, as if some one had struck it with the head of a large nail. On hearing that peculiar sound they fully expected an order for a coffin, and were sure to receive it. So they both declared and believed to the day of their death.

Benjamin, being the oldest son, gained knowledge and skill in all this variety of employment, which was of great use to him, when, a little later in life, he emigrated to the wilderness of Eastern Indiana.

Aside from this labor with his father, he and his brothers, in the energy, love of fun, and heedlessness, of boyhood, became leaders in the boyish mischief and sports of the neighborhood. Game was abundant, and every family possessed a rifled gun. Often each of the larger boys had his own gun. In the use of this weapon Benjamin became exceedingly expert. Up to the time of his marriage, or perhaps even a little later, he was able, and as willing as able, to carry off a very large share of the winnings [[Page: 4]]of shooting matches. He used to tell with evident satisfaction, although it reflected somewhat upon himself, that late on a Saturday evening, after he was nearly grown, he bought or traded for a new rifle. He was exceedingly anxious to make a trial of his gun. The next morning was Sunday, and he knew that his father would be horrified at the thought of any gunning on Sunday. But his anxiety overcame him, and as soon: is he could see, he quietly arose from his bed and made off for the woods. Going far enough away to be out of hearing, he selected some object which he thought would be a fair test and fired off his gun. "I declare," he would say, giving his peculiar emphasis to the expression, "I thought it was the loudest gun I ever heard. It sounded to me like a cannon, and I thought the whole neighborhood would hear it." He rallied his courage, however, and, after making a satisfactory trial of his new gun, returned to the house before the family were awake, and slipped quietly into his bed again.

That Benjamin was endowed with a very extraordinary physical constitution, would be readily inferred from the immense amount of work he performed in the last twenty years of his life. He became an acknowledged leader, in. his youth, in feats of strength and skill. When a stick was held high enough for him to walk under it, he would take a short run and easily leap over it. In height, he fell half an inch below six feet. When he came to Indiana there was a great deal of log-rolling to do. This expression, however, seems to have been extended beyond its literal import, for at the "log-rollings," many of the smaller logs were lifted and carried to the heaps. This was a very convenient opportunity for testing the strength of the working-men. The "hand-spike" was

a stick of tough, hard wood, two or three inches in diameter, about five feet long, and a little sharpened at one end. It was used both in rolling and lifting logs. In lifting, the spike was put under the log, and two men lifted opposite to each other at the same spike. Each neighborhood had its one or two men, against whom few persons were willing to lift. Benjamin's known strength soon brought him into contests of this sort. On one occasion, he lifted against a man of immense size and strength, but with very little activity, whose name was Somers. Raising his side very promptly and holding well up and a little over against him, Benjamin gained and held the advantage until his antagonist saw, and was ready to confess himself beaten. They passed over a piece of soft ground, and Mr. Somers sank over his shoes into the mud, so that he held up his side with extreme difficulty. In homely phrase, but with exceeding good grace, he surrendered: "Ben, if you don't quit lifting over this way so hard, you'll jam me down into this mud so deep that I can never get out."

He seemed never to be weary. He would labor hard all day, and at night would walk several miles to such gatherings as the young people had in his time. After he was grown, he and his father framed and put up a large barn, which is still standing. His father always rested an hour after dinner; during this hour Benjamin would engage a boy living on the place to whistle for him while he danced, with activity and glee, as if he never had any work to do or any care about anything.

Although Joseph Franklin and his wife were pious people and devoted members of the church, the evil influences surrounding their sons prevailed over their own for a time, and their sons grew very rude and profane. It

does not appear that their crimes went farther than that, for the time, they took no interest at all in religion, their conversation was full of profanity and obscenity, and they often engaged in acts of mischief, which, though inspired by love of fun, were sometimes exceedingly annoying and even serious, to the parties on whom they played their pranks. There was no improvement in their morals until about the time when they obeyed the gospel. There was, however, a restraining influence in the character of their parents, demonstrated by the fact that. they always sought to hide their shortcomings, not only from their parents, but from the sober-minded people with whom their parents associated. The influence of parents is often shown more in the after life than in the youth of their children. It was so with the children of Joseph and Isabella Franklin.

In the month of May, 1833, Joseph Franklin moved his family and effects into Henry County, Indiana, and entered a body of land, near where Middletown now stands. Henry County was then almost a wilderness. There were several "settlements" in different parts of the county, comprising a dozen or more families. The one in which Mr. Franklin chose his location was on Deer Creek, near its confluence with Fall Creek. It was a favored location in which to indulge a propensity for milling which showed itself in the family. Joseph Franklin and all his sons were, at one time or another, connected with some of the flouring-mills, and saw-mills, of this region.

The demands of a new country, remote from large towns and manufactories, and occupied chiefly by farmers, set the skill and genius of the elder Franklin to work in new directions. A turning-lathe was erected on his farm, and a vat for tanning sole-leather was sunk. He made shoes, and his own shoe-pegs.

Benjamin, now twenty years of age, had preceded his father, coming along with his uncle, Calvin Franklin, into Henry County in 1832. During the summer and autumn of that year he employed himself with such work as he could find to do. But, on the approach of winter, he learned that hands were wanted to work on the National Road, then being constructed across the State, from Richmond, through Indianapolis, to Terre Haute. Going down to Knightstown, he engaged work for the winter. He had not, however, worked long until the weather grew so cold as to stop all work on the road. Receiving a fine, new axe in payment for what he had done, he returned to the settlement on Deer Creek. On the first day of February he was twenty-one years of age, and soon after the arrival of his father he became the owner of eighty acres of land. On this land he at once began to make some improvement. A quantity of the timber had been "deadened," and perhaps a small space cleared up. His first point of interest was the erection of a log house. He scored and hewed the logs, laid the floor, framed the doors, windows, joists, and rafters, rived the clapboards for the roof, and made his own chimney of sticks plastered with mud. Out of the abundance of choice timber, he selected the very best, and did his work so well that the house still stands, after a lapse of forty-five years, firmer than many others in the neighborhood long since built. The house, on the approach of winter, was erected, but still in an unfinished condition, when another event transpired, to which we must now turn our attention.

Among the earliest settlers on Deer Creek were James and Elizabeth Personett, the father and mother of a family of fourteen children. Benjamin Franklin had made the acquaintance of this family shortly after his arrival in Indiana, and an attachment soon sprang up between him and Mary Personett, the youngest but one of the daughters; and at the time of building the log house above alluded to, they were engaged to be married. With this before him to stimulate his energy, the work was pushed rapidly forward, and as soon as it could be occupied, they were married. This was on the 15th day of December, 1833. His wife was two and a half years older than he, but belongs to a family who live longer. She went with him through all his long career, bore him eleven children, and cared for them with a mother's patient and tender care, through many long years of privation and sorrow, keeping up courage and hope where many a woman would have sunk under the heavy burden.

As soon as they were married, they moved into the new and unfinished house. The floor was of rough oak boards, put down without nails, and the chimney was, at the time, but little above the arch of the fire-place. The house was finished at leisure during the winter; and in spring he was ready for the series of log rollings, with which spring work always began. These over, he turned his attention to his own farm. - He had succeeded in getting several acres cleared well enough to plow, but leaving a large number of the dead trees standing, when a storm of wind came and threw down such a quantity of trees and limbs that cultivation, that year, was impossible. This misfortune discouraged him so much that he was never afterward satisfied on his farm, and made but little effort toward any further improvement of his land while he lived upon it. His skill in carpentering brought his services into demand in the rapidly-growing settlement, and most of his time was spent in this way until the year 1837, when he traded his land for an interest in a saw a; id grist-mill on Deer Creek. His partner was his uncle, Calvin Franklin. Going into milling just as the dreadful financial distress of those years fell upon the country, he met with nothing but discouragement in business. The mill property was sold in 1840.

The habits above described continued with him for some time after his marriage. He took no interest in religion at all. His profanity continued. His immense vitality overflowed in all sorts of boyish performances. On one occasion, —several months after he had been married, —he had been out somewhere and was returning, accompanied by one or two of his brothers and another young man. They crossed an open field toward the house. His wife saw them coming across the field, blundering and staggering to the right and left, and her heart sank within her. Her husband, to whom she had given her heart, and in whose hands she had risked her happiness in this life, was staggering home drunk I It was not like him. He had not been in the habit of drinking; but they were all intoxicated. Nothing else could make them act that way, so she thought. Presently they reached the fence, nearly at the same time, but several rods apart. Then they all indulged in a loud laugh. They had been trying to walk across the field with their eyes shut I The wife was vexed. Could it be possible that her husband would be always a great boy? Was he never to have any dignity?

We have now followed Benjamin Franklin through his youth and up to the time when a mighty revolution in his life took place; to the time of the career in which the reader will be most interested.

In tracing the history of any distinguished man, natural causes are usually sought for as forces developing his greatness. We can only speak of two or three such things, and of these, not so much as causes as agencies of the Providence of God. He, who raises up one man and casts down another to carry out his purposes, may employ agencies which the philosopher would call natural causes; but still the hand of God is in it all the same. These are pome influences known to have contributed to make Benjamin Franklin what he was:

1st. A preference for what is directly practical in the affairs of mankind has always been a family trait. The whole life of Dr. Franklin discovers this trait. He was not a speculative but an experimental philosopher. Asa statesman, he did not submit theories of government, but was always ready to say what the present legislative and executive officers ought to do, and also why they ought to do it. Poor Richard's maxims are none the less brilliant because they are homely—they abound in wisdom applied to the commonplace matter of earning a living and enjoying it. Joseph Franklin, in the third generation below the philosopher, was a man of comprehensive intellect; but his wisdom and skill were given to the affairs of everyday life. Among needy pioneers he made tables and chairs, turning the rungs in his own lathe. He tanned leather and made shoes. He ground his own and his neighbors' flour and meal. He scored and hewed logs and "puncheons," rived "clap-boards," for his own and his neighbors' houses and barns. He cleared away the for rest and tilled the land where it had stood. In a generation which did not call in question the habitual use of alcoholic and narcotic stimulants, he saw the expense, the filth, and the dissipation in both, and so engrafted his sentiments on the minds of his sons, that, with the exception of one who chewed tobacco moderately, all followed the example of their temperate father. And finally, in religion, when he heard preaching that in all its discoursing bore directly on the character of man, his judgment at once approved it as superior to that speculative theology in which he never was fully interested. The Franklin family did not speculate in commerce, in philosophy, nor in religion.

2d. The circumstances of his early youth tended to develop him in the highest possible degree. The habits of the people of the West in that generation were exceedingly simple. They lived in a wilderness, were poor, and lived upon the simplest and most wholesome food. Their houses were thoroughly ventilated because they were unable to build them so well as to exclude the pure air. They were compelled by their every-day necessities to take abundance of open-air exercise. Living so plainly, and working hard have ever been felt to be great disadvantages. The people therefore studied intently how they might better their situation. "Necessity is the mother of invention." The necessities of the people not only required physical but intellectual activity. In this way the circumstances of his early life combined to develop in Benjamin Franklin a robust intellectual and physical manhood. We cannot, however, —as most biographers have a penchant for doing, —trace our hero through his youth as a young Saul, always in his sports and exercises, "from his shoulders and upwards higher than any of the people." Thousands of young men, his contemporaries, went through the same complete drill and preparation, who were never widely known, because their immense

intellectual and physical vigor were expended

upon their own private affairs. This country has developed thousands of great men who were not distinguished men because their great powers were not exhibited in public life.

3d. The religious and moral character of his parents had a great influence upon him. Mention has been made of his father's advanced views as to the use of alcoholic drinks and tobacco, and the impression he made on his sons in this respect. In religion the influence of his mother was joined to that of his father, and was, perhaps, even greater. They were a man and woman of profound faith. They lived and walked by faith, and BO constant and consistent were they in their religious devotions, that all their children, after the years of their youthful waywardness had passed, were led to become and to live devout Christians. This trait was stronger in his mother. It does not appear that his father ever wavered in his faith, but he sometimes wearied in his acts of devotion. He had fits of despondency, produced most likely by a physical infirmity, and these possessed him so that he could not sufficiently command himself while they were upon him to read the Bible, and pray with his family. On these occasions the moral courage of his wife showed itself. At his request she would lead in the family devotions until he had "got out of the Slough of Despond." In the same way, and for the same reason, he sometimes slackened his forces in the control of their children. She never did. She was buoyant and hopeful, full of courage and determination, and persistently followed up their waywardness and shortcomings. On one Sunday morning, Benjamin had been dressed for the day in his clean clothes. It was a warm morning after a rain. The boys had constructed a min-

iature water-wheel and put it into a stream which ran near the house. Benjamin went to the stream and was amusing himself with his "mill." His mother saw him, and commanded him to leave the water, threatening to whip him if she caught him there again. He went away, but soon yielded to the temptation and went again to the water-wheel. His mother saw him, and in a moment was coming down to him with a switch in her hand. When he chanced to look up and saw her coming, he yielded to an unusual impulse, and, for the first time in his life, started to run away from his mother. She called to him to stop, but still he ran on, glancing over his shoulder occasionally to see if she was gaining on him. Presently she slipped and fell at full length in the mud. His heart relented at seeing her fall, and he stopped. In later years when he was able to bring a man's judgment to bear upon the case, he often told the circumstance to show how he always came off secondbest in any contest with his mother. She was not angered by his running from her, but spoke calmly of his disobediance, pointed to his soiled clothes as the reason why she forbade him to go into the water, and then deliberately punished him as she thought he deserved to be punished.

We have before us, therefore, a man developed physically and intellectually in a very high degree, and inheriting an intensely practical bent of mind and a susceptibility of the strongest convictions of right and wrong. The truth of the Bible is impressed on his mind and he only needs the awakening to a sense of sinfulness, and instruction in the doctrine of the Bible. The awakening and the instruction came in due time. His soul grasped the truth, and, enlightened by it, he was at once filled with an unconquerable zeal to proclaim it to others.

When and by whom this instruction came will soon be related. But we must first call the attention of the reader to some matters without a knowledge of which it is believed the career of Benjamin Franklin will not be understood.