Dear Son: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of
my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of
my relations when you were with me in England, and the journey I
undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to [2]
you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which you are yet
unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a week's uninterrupted
leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write them for
you. To which I have besides some other inducements. Having emerged from
the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of
affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so
far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing
means I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded,
my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to
their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.
[1] The country-seat of Bishop Shipley, the good bishop, as Dr. Franklin
used to style him.--B.
[2] After the words "agreeable to" the words "some of" were interlined
and afterward effaced.--B.
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say,
that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a
repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the
advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of
the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But
though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a
repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one's
life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make
that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.
Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to
be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge
it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might
conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read
or not as any one pleases. And, lastly (I may as well confess it, since
my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal
gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the
introductory words, "Without vanity I may say," &c., but some vain thing
immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever
share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I
meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the
possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and
therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man
were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to
acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His
kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them
success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not
presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in
continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which
I may experience as others have done: the complexion of my future
fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even
our afflictions.
The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in
collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands, furnished me with
several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I
learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in
Northamptonshire, for three hundred years, and how much longer he knew
not (perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before was
the name of an order of people, was assumed by them as a surname when
others took surnames all over the kingdom), on a freehold of about
thirty acres, aided by the smith's business, which had continued in the
family till his time, the eldest son being always bred to that business;
a custom which he and my father followed as to their eldest sons. When I
searched the registers at Ecton, I found an account of their births,
marriages and burials from the year 1555 only, there being no registers
kept in that parish at any time preceding. By that register I perceived
that I was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations
back. My grandfather Thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till
he grew too old to follow business longer, when he went to live with his
son John, a dyer at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served
an apprenticeship. There my grandfather died and lies buried. We saw his
gravestone in 1758. His eldest son Thomas lived in the house at Ecton,
and left it with the land to his only child, a daughter, who, with her
husband, one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Isted, now lord
of the manor there. My grandfather had four sons that grew up, viz.:
Thomas, John, Benjamin and Josiah. I will give you what account I can of
them, at this distance from my papers, and if these are not lost in my
absence, you will among them find many more particulars.
Thomas was bred a smith under his father; but, being ingenious, and
encouraged in learning (as all my brothers were) by an Esquire Palmer,
then the principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified himself for
the business of scrivener; became a considerable man in the county; was
a chief mover of all public-spirited undertakings for the county or town
of Northampton, and his own village, of which many instances were
related of him; and much taken notice of and patronized by the then Lord
Halifax. He died in 1702, January 6, old style, just four years to a day
before I was born. The account we received of his life and character
from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as something
extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew of mine. "Had he
died on the same day," you said, "one might have supposed a
transmigration."
John was bred a dyer, I believe of woolens. Benjamin was bred a silk
dyer, serving an apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I
remember him well, for when I was a boy he came over to my father in
Boston, and lived in the house with us some years. He lived to a great
age. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. He left behind
him two quarto volumes, MS., of his own poetry, consisting of little
occasional pieces addressed to his friends and relations, of which the
following, sent to me, is a specimen. ¹ He had formed a short-hand of
his own, which he taught me, but, never practising it, I have now forgot
it. I was named after this uncle, there being a particular affection
between him and my father. He was very pious, a great attender of
sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in his short-hand, and
had with him many volumes of them. He was also much of a politician; too
much, perhaps, for his station. There fell lately into my hands, in
London, a collection he had made of all the principal pamphlets,
relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717; many of the volumes are
wanting as appears by the numbering, but there still remain eight
volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto and in octavo. A dealer in
old books met with them, and knowing me by my sometimes buying of him,
he brought them to me. It seems my uncle must have left them here, when
he went to America, which was about fifty years since. There are many of
his notes in the margins.
¹ Here follow in the margin the words, in brackets, "here insert it,"
but the poetry is not given. Mr. Sparks informs us (Life of Franklin,
p. 6) that these volumes had been preserved, and were in possession of
Mrs. Emmons, of Boston, great-grandmother of their author.
This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued
Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in
danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got
an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open
with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When my
great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the
joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the
tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw
the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that
case the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible
remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle
Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church of England till about
the end of Charles the Second's reign, when some of the ministers that
had been outed for nonconformity holding conventicles in
Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adhered to them, and so continued
all their lives: the rest of the family remained with the Episcopal
Church.
Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three
children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been
forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable
men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was prevailed
with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode
of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children more
born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I
remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who all grew up to
be men and women, and married; I was the youngest son, and the youngest
child but two, and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the
second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the
first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by
Cotton Mather, in his church history of that country, entitled Magnalia
Christi Americana, as "a godly, learned Englishman," if I remember the
words rightly. I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional
pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years
since. It was written in 1675, in the home-