But even with the passage of time, Franklin's passions were unrelenting; in fact they seemed to have only grown stronger. From age 50 and until his death at 84, he spent very little time in Philadelphia with Rebecca she died 16 years before him. Instead, for most of those years, he was busy hobnobbing in London and Paris, accruing a reputation for his extracurricular activities.
So affirmed a verse that was circulating around him:. But is too ready to engage When younger arms invite him. Perhaps one of the more revealing documents on his views on women, which had been known in certain circles but kept under wraps for almost years, was a letter he wrote in , offering advice to a young man who was having trouble with his own insatiable libido.
In the letter, which was entitled "Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress," Franklin advised: "In all your Amours, you should prefer old Women to young ones. He invented bifocal glasses, charted the Gulf Stream, invented a clean burning stove and proposed theories on the contagiousness of the common cold. His approach was more practical than theoretical. His training as a craftsman made him more accomplished as an inventor.
As a journalist his most important journalistic influence was his brother James who is considered the first fighter for journalistic freedom in America. This legacy is framed and hanged in many newsroom walls in America. Franklin was an ambitious entrepreneur, disciplined and industrious, working hard until late at night. He used the skills he had learned to open his own printing business.
As a politician he was the first one to propose the union of the colonies for common defense. He was dutiful and affectionate toward his family, but it was to close friends that he most often expressed his ardent devotion.
During the course of his long life, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, maintaining personal ties both in America and across the Atlantic. Franklin was one of seventeen children in a family of Boston tradesmen. When Benjamin was 12, he was apprenticed to his older brother James, a printer. Franklin saw his future wife Deborah Reed on his very first day in Philadelphia.
Later, their family grew with the birth of their son Francis Folger who died at four and daughter, Sarah Sally. In their early years, the family lived a simple and frugal life. Deborah worked alongside Benjamin to support his growing printing business. Franklin rebelled and threatened to run away if forced to pursue it. Franklin was a quick study and soon mastered all aspects of the trade. Franklin later repudiated this thought and burned all but one copy of the pamphlet still in his possession.
After Franklin returned to Philadelphia in , he discovered that Deborah had married in the interim, only to be abandoned by her husband just months after the wedding. The future Founding Father rekindled his romance with Deborah Read and he took her as his common-law wife in Around that time, Franklin fathered a son, William, out of wedlock who was taken in by the couple.
The two times Franklin moved to London, in and again in , it was without Deborah, who refused to leave Philadelphia. His second stay was the last time the couple saw each other. Franklin would not return home before Deborah passed away in from a stroke at the age of When the New Jersey militia stripped William Franklin of his post as royal governor and imprisoned him in , his father chose not to intercede on his behalf.
After his return to Philadelphia in , Franklin held varied jobs including bookkeeper, shopkeeper and currency cutter. In he returned to a familiar trade - printing paper currency - in New Jersey before partnering with a friend to open his own print shop in Philadelphia that published government pamphlets and books. In Franklin was named the official printer of Pennsylvania. In Franklin published another pamphlet, "A Modest Enquiry into The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency," which advocated for an increase in the money supply to stimulate the economy.
With the cash Franklin earned from his money-related treatise, he was able to purchase The Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper from a former boss. Under his ownership, the struggling newspaper was transformed into the most widely-read paper in the colonies and became one of the first to turn a profit. He had less luck in when he launched the first German-language newspaper in the colonies, the short-lived Philadelphische Zeitung.
Franklin amassed real estate and businesses and organized the volunteer Union Fire Company to counteract dangerous fire hazards in Philadelphia. He joined the Freemasons in and was eventually elected grand master of the Masons of Pennsylvania. In the s, Franklin expanded into science and entrepreneurship. His pamphlet "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge" underscored his interests and served as the founding document of the American Philosophical Society , the first scientific society in the colonies.
By , the year-old Franklin had become one of the richest men in Pennsylvania, and he became a soldier in the Pennsylvania militia. He turned his printing business over to a partner to give himself more time to conduct scientific experiments. He moved into a new house in Franklin also discovered the Gulf Stream after his return trip across the Atlantic Ocean from London in He began to speculate about why the westbound trip always took longer, and his measurements of ocean temperatures led to his discovery of the existence of the Gulf Stream.
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