A great wit, a legendarily

hard worker, a charming

diplomat, a tireless
inventor, and a steadfast
patriot, Franklin spent his
life in service to his
family, his community,
and his country.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
1706-1790
 TIMELINE OF BIOGRAPHY
 1706 He is born, in Boston, and baptized in the Old
South Church. 1714 At the age of eight, enters the
Grammar School. 1716 Becomes his father’s assistant in
the tallow-chandlery business; 1718 Apprenticed to his
brother James, printer. 1721 Writes ballads and, in
printed form ; contributes, anonymously, to the “New
England Courant,” and temporarily edits that paper;
becomes a freethinker, and a vegetarian.
1723 Breaks his indenture and removes to Philadelphia;
obtaining employment in Keimer’s printing-office;
abandons vegetarianism. 1724 Is persuaded by
Governor Keith to establish himself independently, and
goes to London to buy type; works at his trade there, and
publishes “Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity,
Pleasure and Pain.” 1726 Returns to Philadelphia; after
serving as clerk in a dry goods store, becomes manager
of Keimer’s printing-house. 1727 Founds the Junto, or
“Leathern Apron” Club. 1728 With Hugh Meredith, opens
a printing-office.
1729 Becomes proprietor and editor of the
“Pennsylvania Gazette”; prints, anonymously, “Nature
and Necessity of a Paper Currency”; opens a stationer’s
shop. 1730 Marries Rebecca Read. 1731 Founds the
Philadelphia Library. 1732 Publishes the first number of
“Poor Richard’s Almanac” under the pseudonym of
“Richard Saunders.” The Almanac, which continued for
twenty-five years to contain his witty, worldly-wise
sayings, played a very large part in bringing together
and molding the American character which was at that
time made up of so many diverse and scattered types.
1738 Begins to study French, Italian, Spanish, and
Latin. 1736 Chosen clerk of the General Assembly;
forms the Union Fire Company of Philadelphia.
1737 Elected to the Assembly; appointed Deputy
Postmaster- General; plans a city police. 1742 Invents
the open, or “Franklin,” stove. 1743 Proposes a plan for
an Academy, which is adopted 1749 and develops into
the University of Pennsylvania. 1744 Establishes the
American Philosophical Society. 1746 Publishes a
pamphlet, “Plain Truth,” on the necessity for disciplined
defense, and forms a military company.
1747 begins electrical experiments. 1748 Sells out his
printing business; is appointed on the Commission of the
Peace, chosen to the Common Council, and to the
Assembly. 1749 Appointed a Commissioner to trade with
the Indians. 1751 Aids in founding a hospital. 1752
Experiments with a kite and discovers that lightning is an
electrical discharge. 1753 Awarded the Copley medal for
this discovery, and elected a member of the Royal
Society; receives the degree of M.A. from Yale and
Harvard. Appointed joint Postmaster-General.
1754 Appointed one of the Commissioners from Pennsylvania to the
Colonial Congress at Albany; proposes a plan for the union of the
colonies. 1755 Pledges his personal property in order that supplies may
be raised for Braddock’s army; obtains a grant from the Assembly in aid
of the Crown Point expedition; carries through a bill establishing a
voluntary militia; is appointed Colonel, and takes the field. 1757
Introduces a bill in the Assembly for paving the streets of Philadelphia;
publishes his famous “Way to Wealth”; goes to England to plead the
cause of the Assembly against the Proprietaries; remains as agent for
Pennsylvania; enjoys the friendship of the scientific and literary men of
the kingdom. 1760 Secures from the Privy Council, by a compromise, a
decision obliging the Proprietary estates to contribute to the public

revenue.
1762 Receives the degree of LL.D. from Oxford and
Edinburgh; returns to America. 1763 Makes a five
months’ tour of the northern colonies
for the Purpose of inspecting the post-offices. 1764
Defeated by the Penn faction for reelection to the
Assembly; sent to England as agent for Pennsylvania.
1765 Endeavors to prevent the passage of the Stamp
Act. 1766 Examined before the House of Commons
relative to the passage of the Stamp Act; appointed
agent of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia;
visits Gottingen University.
1767 Travels in France and is presented at court. 1769
Procures a telescope for Harvard College. 1772 Elected
Associe Etranger of the French Academy. 1774 Dismissed
from the office of Postmaster-General; influences Thomas
Paine to emigrate to America. 1775 Returns to America;
chosen a delegate to the Second Continental Congress;
placed on the committee of secret correspondence;
appointed one of the commissioners to secure the
cooperation of Canada. 1776 Placed on the committee to
draft a Declaration of Independence; chosen president of
the Constitutional Committee of Pennsylvania; sent to
France as agent of the colonies.
1778 Concludes treaties of defensive alliance, and of
amity and commerce; is received at court. 1779
Appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to France.
1780 Appoints Paul Jones commander of the “Alliance.”
1782 Signs the preliminary articles of peace. 1783 Signs
the definite treaty of peace. 1785 Returns to America; is
chosen President of Pennsylvania; reelected 1786. 1787
Reelected President; sent as delegate to the convention
for framing a Federal Constitution. 1788 Retires from
public life. 1790 April 17, dies. His grave is in the
churchyard at Fifth and Arch streets, Philadelphia.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
FROM HIS WRITINGS AND ABOUT HIM
 1. Temperance Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

 2. Silence Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid
trifling conversation.

 3. Order Let all your things have their places; let each part of your
business have its time.

 4. Resolution Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail

what you resolve.

 5. Frugality Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e.,

waste nothing.

 6. Industry Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut

off all unnecessary actions.

 7. Sincerity Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if

you speak, speak accordingly.
 8. Justice Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits
that are your duty.
 9. Moderation Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so
much as you think they deserve.
 10. Cleanliness Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or
habitation.
 11. Tranquility Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents
common or unavoidable.
 12. Chastity Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never
to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's
peace or reputation.
 13. Humility Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness
of head which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be
kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of
ancient habits and the force of perpetual temptations. This being
acquired and established, Silence would be more easy. My desire
being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improved in virtue,
and considering that in conversation it was obtained rather by the
use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a
habit I was getting into prattling, punning, and joking, which only
made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second
place. This and the next, Order, I expected would allow me more
time for attending to my project and my studies.
Resolution, once because habitual, would keep me firm in my
endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality and
Industry, freeing me from my remaining debt, and producing
affluence and independence, would make more easy the practice
of Sincerity and Justice, etc., Conceiving, then, that, agreeably to
the advice of Pythagoras in his Garden Verses, daily examination
would be necessary, I contrived the a method for conducting that
examination.

Here will I hold. If there's a power above us (And that there is, all
nature cries aloud Thro' all her works), He must delight in virtue;
And that which He delights in must be happy.
 A Prayer

 Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!

 O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!

 Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,

 From every low pursuit; and fill my soul

 With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;

 Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!

First example of the fulfillment of the American Dream is
the life of Ben Franklin. Franklin demonstrates the
possibilities of life in the New World through his own rise
from the lower middle class as a youth to one of the most
admired men in the world as an adult. Furthermore, he
asserts that he achieved his success through a solid work
ethic. He proved that even undistinguished persons in
Boston can, through industry, become great figures of
importance in America. When we think of the American
Dream today [before Trump] - the ability to rise from rags
to riches through hard work--we are usually thinking of
the model set forth by Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin is well-known for his aphorisms –
usually printed in his almanacs and public essays ⎯
promoting frugality, hard work, and plain living as the road
to success. This does not mean that Franklin was
opposed to wealth, nor that his later acquisition of luxury
goods was hypocritical. What mattered to Franklin was
how one achieved wealth (honestly) and how one
displayed it (unostentatiously). Indeed, the growing
personal wealth of American colonists in the mid 1700s
was taken by Franklin as a proud sign of the colonies’
success within the empire and their future value to the
world.
THE SPEECH OF POLLY BAKER.
The Speech of Miss Polly Baker before a Court of

Judicatory, in New England, where she was

prosecuted or a fifth time, for having a Bastard

Child ;

 which influenced the Court to dispense with

her punishment, and

which induced one of her judges to marry her the

next day by whom she had fifteen children.
 I readily consented to the only proposal of marriage
that ever was made me, which was when I was a
virgin, but too easily confiding in the person ‘s sincerity
that made it, I unhappily lost my honour by trusting to
his ; for he got me with child, and then forsook me.
 That very person, you all know, he is now become a
magistrate of this country;
 I must now complain of it, as unjust and unequal,
that my betrayer, and undoer, should be advanced to
honor and power in the government that punishes my
misfortunes with stripes and infamy.
At times, Indian peace was as important to the history of the
continent as Indian war, and the mid-eighteenth century was such a
time. Out of English efforts at alliance with the Iroquois came a
need for treaty councils, which brought together leaders of both
cultures. And from the earliest days of his professional life, Franklin
was drawn to the diplomatic and ideological interchange of these
councils -- first as a printer of their proceedings, then as a Colonial
envoy, the beginning of one of the most distinguished diplomatic
careers in American history.
Out of these councils grew an early campaign by Franklin for
Colonial union on a federal model, very similar to the Iroquois
system.
Contact with Indians and their ways of ordering life left a
imprint on Franklin and others who were seeking, during the
prerevolutionary period, alternatives to a European order
against which revolution would be made. To Jefferson, and
Franklin, the Indians had what the colonists wanted:
societies free of oppression and class stratification. The
Iroquois and other Indian nations fired the imaginations of
the revolution’s architects. As Henry Steele Commager has
written, America acted the Enlightenment as European
radicals dreamed it. Extensive, intimate contact with Indian
nations was a major reason for this difference.
The "Age of Discovery" that Columbus initiated in 1492
was also an age of cultural interchange between the
peoples of Europe and the Americas. Each learned
from the other, borrowing artifacts -- and ideas. This
traffic continues today. The result of such extensive
communication across cultural lines has produced in
contemporary North America a composite culture that is
rich in diversity, and of a type unique in the world. The
Vikings left some tools behind in northeast North
America. But while pottery, tools, and other things may
be traced and dated, ideas are harder to follow through
time.
 Americanization of the white man
 The question of American Indian influence on the
intellectual traditions of Euro-American culture has been
raised, especially during the last thirty years. These
questions, however, have not yet been examined in the
depth that the complexity of Indian contributions
warrant. America unique, built from contributions not
only by Europeans and American Indians, but also by
almost every other major cultural and ethnic group that
has taken up residence in the Americas.
American nation gathers its people from many peoples of the Old
World, its language and its free institutions it inherits from England, its
civilization and art from Greece and Rome, its religion from Judea --
and even these red men of the forest have wrought some of the chief
stones in our national temple. In an early history of the relations
between Sir William Johnson and the Iroquois, William E. Griffis in
1891 advised further study of Iroquoian influence on the formation of
the United States, especially Benjamin Franklin’s role in this
interaction.
Here, then, we find the right of popular nomination, the right of recall
and of woman suffrage flourishing in the old America of the Red Man
and centuries before it became the clamor of the new America of the
white invader. Who now shall call the Indians and Iroquois savages?