Benjamin Franklin

Essay by mauhanHigh School, 10th grade March 2003

download word file, 9 pages 3.0

January 17th, 1706 Abiah and Josiah Franklin were blessed with the birth of a baby boy, a boy who would grow up to be a great man. A writer, an inventor, a scientist, a diplomat, and a man that would play a major role in shaping the world he lived in .His name was Benjamin Franklin.

Josiah was a Englishman who moved to Boston in 1683. He was a candle and soap maker and the father to seventeen children. In his life he had two wives, one of whom was Abiah. She was the mother to ten of the children. She was born on Nantucket Island and her 8th child was named after her husband's brother Benjamin. Josiah wanted all of his sons to be educated and to learn a trade. When Benjamin became of age he was sent to grammar school. He did very well in reading and writing but was struggling with arithmetic.

In order to learn a trade, Ben's father took him out school at the age of 12. Ben was sent to be an apprentice to his brother James at his printing office. Ben loved to write but was smart enough to know that no one wanted to read about what a young boy had to say so he wrote in secret under the name Silence Dogood. He would slip his stories under the door of his brother's print shop and his brother would print them. The people in the town loved to read these stories, but eventually James found out whom Silence Dogood really was. He got very upset at Ben and their relationship was never the same.

Ben also loved to read. He once read a book about swimming and from it taught himself a basic swimming stroke. In perhaps what was his...