Biography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was married twice. Between both of Josiah's marriages, he fathered 17 children.

Ben's schooling ended at age ten and at age 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer who published the New England Courant. Benjamin wanted to write for the paper too, but he knew that James would never let him because, Benjamin was just an apprentice. So Ben began writing letters at night and signing them with the name of a fictional widow, Silence Dogood. These letters offered advice and were very critical of the world and of how women were treated. Ben would sneak the letters under the print shop door at night so no one knew who was writing the pieces. After he had written over a dozen letters, he admitted to his brother that he had been the one writing them.

At the age of 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. He worked at a printing house. By 1730, Franklin had set up a printing house of his own and had contrived to become the publisher of a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette.

Franklin asked Deborah Read to marry him in September of 1730, but her mother thought she was too young to mary him. Ben went to London and while he was there Deborah married a man named John Rodgers. Rodgers shortly fled debt and prosecution by going to Barbados, leaving Deborah behind. With his fate being unknown, Deborah could not remarry because bigamy was illegal.

In that same year Ben moved in with Deborah because he had an illegitimate son named William whose mother is unknown. He and Deborah eventually had 2 of their own children, one of which died of smallpox as a small child. In 1732 Franklin began to issue the famous Poor Richard's Almanack on which much of his popular reputation is based.

Franklin and several other members of a philosophical association joined their resources in 1731 and began the first public library in Philadelphia. The newly founded Library Company ordered its first books in 1732. In 1736 he created the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer firefighting company in America.

He had made discoveries that gave him a reputation with the learned throughout Europe and especially in France.These include his investigations of electricity. Franklin proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of electrical fluid (as electricity was called then) but the same electrical fluid under different pressures. He is also often credited with labeling them as positive