Benjamin Franklin Essay -- Biography Biographies Bio

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin was an American printer and publisher, author, inventor, scientist, and who was a diplomat born on January 17th 1706 and died in Philadelphia on April 17th 1790. Franklin was one of ten sons of seventeen children of a man by the name of Josiah who was a soap and candle maker and mother by the name of Abiah, a discrete and virtuous woman (Van Doren 7). Ben was raised in a Puritan heritage household which they had left to avoid England's Restoration Era of 1683. Franklin had a blend of Puritan heritage, Enlightenment philosophy, and New World environment ideals. Ben Franklin had a fascination public and interpersonal life. Franklin's life consisted of his reflections of his own behaviors and embracing curiosities of the whole moral and physical world around him (Ford 60-64). Ben married in September 1st 1730 to a woman by the name of Deborah Read. Franklin was an apprentice under his brother and a printer of a Boston newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Almanac of Poor Richard and a good share of printing in that era (Van Doren 69). Ben also a philosopher, who followed the secular world view of Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke and favorite author named Joseph Addison. Franklin was a civic leader starting in 1727 who helped in putting together the Organization of Junto, a club of tradesmen in Pennsylvania who helped with civic improvements of that city which were: a library, fire company, college, insurance company and hospital (Van Doren 63). Ben was also an inventor who discovered bifocals and the ability to harness electricity through a lightening bolt in 1746 (Phelps 485). These achievements were just a small fraction of what Franklin was capable of doing. Ben was also a politician... ...on of a new government. Benjamin Franklin would not have been best known today as one of the Great Founding Fathers of The New World known as North America. Along side with him were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Hancock. Without all seven of these true Americans, there would not be a free and independent nation called the United States of America. Bibliography Ford and Grillparzer. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Issaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Phelps, Shirelle and Jeffrey Lehman, eds. West Encylopedia. New York: Gale, 2005. Rakove, Jack. The Beginnings of National Politics. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins U Press, 1979. Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Garden City Publishing, 1941.