Young Benjamin Franklin

by Nick Bunker

  9. “Consummate networker”: Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York, 2003), p. 55.

  10. William Allen: See the biographical essay in the perennially helpful LLP 3, especially pp. 232–34, dealing with his business interests. Durham: Benjamin F. Fackenthal, The Durham Iron Works in Durham Township (Bucks County Historical Society, PA, 1922) in the Fackenthal collection of material about the Pennsylvania iron industry at the Spruance Library, Mercer Museum, Doylestown, PA.

  11. Hamilton’s speech, August 10, 1739: MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, Vol. 3, pp. 2505–8. On the economic history of Pennsylvania, and the central importance of the Keystone State for the economic history of the United States as a whole, see Thomas M. Doerflinger’s invaluable A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, NC, 1986), especially pp. 74–77, 97–22, and 136–64. Without the kind of insights that Doerflinger provides, it is impossible to understand what Frankin and his friends and neighbors were trying to achieve in the colony after 1730.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: YEARS OF SUCCESS

  1. For examples of Bradford’s attacks on Hamilton and Franklin’s response, see the crossfire between the two newspapers in the files of The American Weekly Mercury and The Pennsylvania Gazette at election time in September–November 1733.

  2. Franklin to Sarah Franklin Davenport, June ?, 1730, BFP 1, p. 171.

  3. The Morning Post, June 1, 1779.

  4. Hugh Roberts: LLP 2, pp. 892–99.

  5. George Roberts: Quoted in Sheila J. Skemp, “William Franklin: His Father’s Son,” in PMHB 109, no. 2 (1985): 147–48.

  6. Quotations: From William Smith, A Sermon Preached In Christ Church, Philadelphia, Before the Provincial Grand Master…On Tuesday June 24th 1755 (Philadelphia, 1755).

  7. Membership in the 1730s: Liber B of St. John’s Lodge, Philadelphia, at HSP, file Am. 327. Early history of Freemasonry in America: Mark A. Tabbert, American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities (New York, 2005), pp. 33–36.

  8. British Freemasonry: Ric Berman, The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry (Eastbourne, UK, 2011), Chapters 2 and 3. For examples of the public dissemination of information about masonic membership and rituals: London Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal, December 5, 1730; and (probably by Martin Clare) A Defence of Masonry (1730), reprinted in James Anderson, The New Book of Constitutions of the…Free and Accepted Masons (London, 1738), pp. 216–30.

  9. BFP 1, pp. 192–93.

  10. James Logan’s use of the Franklinian phrase “ways to get wealth” occurs in his September 1723 Charge Delivered from the Bench to the Grand Jury, printed by Andrew Bradford, also including Logan’s list of virtues. I take the view that the influence of James Logan, the freethinking Quaker, was far more significant in the shaping of Franklin’s career than the cultural legacy the latter received from New England Calvinism.

  11. BFP 1, pp. 191–92. On Joseph Morgan: Whitfield J. Bell Jr., “The Reverend Joseph Morgan, an American Correspondent of the Royal Society, 1732–1739,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95, no. 3 (June 1951).

  12. The Logan Memorandum: Joseph E. Johnson, “A Quaker Imperialist’s View of the British Colonies in America, 1732,” in PMHB 60, no. 2 (April 1936), especially pp. 125–27.

  13. Thomas Hopkinson and his background: G. E. Hastings, The Life and Work of Francis Hopkinson (Chicago, 1936), pp. 8–12; London Flying Post, May 3–5, 1716; London Daily Courant, October 23, 1721; and Matthew Hopkinson’s Piccadilly leases dated 1716, at Westminster City Archives, England, files 0097/023-5.

  14. South Carolina in the 1730s: M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663–1763 (Williamsburg, VA, 1966), pp. 164–83.

  15. On Franklin’s printing partnerships: Ralph A. Frasca, Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America (Columbia, MO, 2006), pp. 58–75 and passim.

  16. The best brief account of the origins and development of Poor Richard is in James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass, Benjamin Franklin: Writer and Printer (Newcastle, DE, 2006), Chapter 6.

  17. Improvements in Philadelphia: Jessica Choppin Roney, Government by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore, 2014), pp. 55–62.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE DEVIL’S INSTRUMENT

  1. BFP 1, pp. 194–99.

  2. AWM, September 20–27, 1733.

  3. PG, October 11, 1733; and BFP 1, pp. 333–38.

  4. AWM, January 22–29, 1734. On Hamilton’s alleged atheism, also see note 6 to Chapter 13.

  5. These quotations come from Franklin’s Preface to the pro-Hemphill pamphlet, A Letter to a Friend in the Country (September 1735), in BFP 2, pp. 66–67. This volume of the Franklin papers reprints all the pro-Hemphill material he published.

  6. Mr. Andrews: Biographical sketch in Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Vol. 4, 1690–1700 (Cambridge, MA, 1933), pp. 219–25. For a narrative of the Hemphill affair, and for the state of Presbyterian churches in the colony, the most important source (apart from the pamphlets that appeared pro and con Mr. Hemphill) is the minute book of the Synod of Philadelphia, September 1729–September 1736, published in Records of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Philadelphia, 1841), pp. 90–117. It lists the synod’s members including the lay elders. For an account of the affair that reviews the academic literature, see Bryan F. LeBeau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism (Lexington, KY, 1997), pp. 45–63; also, Melvin H. Buxbaum, Benjamin Franklin and the Zealous Presbyterians (Philadelphia, 1975), Chapter 2. Neither book places the Hemphill case in its wider, transatlantic context.

  7. Growing congregation: Marriage register, at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia (F/MI/46/P477r), showing the number of weddings increasing from an average of about twenty per annum in the early 1720s to about seventy each year in the mid-1730s.

  8. Ulster schism: Peter Brooke, Ulster Presbyterianism: The Historical Perspective, 1610–1970 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 81–96; and I. R. McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterianism and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), Chapters 1 and 2. The most famous New Light preacher was the Reverend John Abernethy of Belfast, who in 1719 preached a highly controversial sermon—Religious Obedience Founded on Personal Persuasion—whose title captures the flavor of the movement to which he and Samuel Hemphill belonged.

  9. Scots-Irish settlers: Richard K. MacMaster, “Searching for Order: Donegal Springs, Pennsylvania in the 1720s and 1730s,” in Warren R. Hofstra, ed., Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680–1830 (Knoxville, TN, 2012), pp. 51–76; and Patrick Griffin, “The People with No Name: Ulster’s Migrants and Identity Formation in Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania,” in WMQ 58, no. 3 (July 2001): 590–96.

  10. Logan to the Reverend James Kirkpatrick, August 2, 1729, in Logan’s letter books, Vol. 4, p. 223, at the American Philosophical Society. Kirkpatrick was a leading New Light minister in Ulster and a close associate of John Abernethy (see note 8 and ODNB).

  11. Hemphill had entered Glasgow University in April 1716, but it is not clear whether he graduated: Records of the University of Glasgow from its Foundation until 1727 (Glasgow, 1854), Vol. 3, p. 49.

  12. The Vance letter and Hemphill’s Ulster background: Records of the General Synod of Ulster, 1691–1820 (Belfast, 1897), Vol. 2, pp. 189 and 208–9. Also: Strabane Presbytery Minutes (1723–1740), at Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, CR3/26/2/1, Ac 17173, showing Hemphill subscribing to the Westminster Confession on March 4, 1729.

  13. Pemberton Junior: Biographical sketch in Clifford Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Vol. 6 (1713–1721) (Cambridge, MA, 1942), pp. 535–46.

  14. “Silly women,” etc.: From Frankl
in and Hemphill, A Defence of the Rev. Mr Hemphill’s Observations (Philadelphia, October 1735), in BFP 2, pp. 125–26. Scornful comments about Andrews: pp. 40–41.

  15. Hemphill’s plagiarism: “Obadiah Jenkins,” Remarks Upon the Defence of the Rev. Mr Hemphill’s Observations (Philadelphia, 1735–36), pp. 17–20. This pamphlet was apparently coauthored by Pemberton and by Jonathan Dickinson, the first president of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University.

  16. BFP 3, p. 398.

  17. In their material (BFP 2, p. 65), Hemphill and Franklin quoted from a “lay sermon” given to an audience of lawyers in London in 1733 by the radical Whig Thomas Gordon, one of the writers for The London Journal. Gordon’s attacks on the Anglican clergy were part of an anticlerical campaign in the press and in Parliament in the mid-1730s to which (for his own devious reasons) Walpole gave a degree of official support: see T. F. J. Kendrick, “Sir Robert Walpole, the Old Whigs and the Bishops, 1733–1736,” in Historical Journal 11, no. 3 (1968), pp. 421−445. An avid reader of the London newspapers—too avid, perhaps—Franklin could easily have jumped to the conclusion that in England freethinkers such as he were about to win a decisive victory over the Anglican establishment. So he tried to copy Gordon and pursue a similar kind of anticlerical campaign in Pennsylvania, but with the Presbyterians as his target. In fact the issues at stake in London and Philadelphia were very different, and anyway Thomas Gordon and his allies were defeated when Walpole called a halt to their activities. I do not think that Franklin understood just how cynical Walpole could be in his political exploitation of religious controversies. Another example of Franklin’s borrowings from Gordon: PG, September 21, 1733.

  18. Wissahickon and the early paper industry in Pennsylvania: James N. Green, The Rittenhouse Mill and the Beginnings of Paper Making in America (Philadelphia, 1990); John Bidwell, “Printers’ Supplies and Capitalization,” in David D. Hall, ed., The History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), Vol. 1, pp. 176–77; and C. William Miller, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766 (Philadelphia, 1974), pp. xxxviii–xli). The first rag advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette: April 11, 1734.

  19. Miller, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766, pp. 56–61.

  20. Charles Coleman Sellers, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven, 1962), pp. 8–13 and 21–22.

  21. BFP 2, pp. 173–78.

  22. The Rees affair: BFP 2, pp. 198–202.

  23. Franklin to his parents, April 13, 1738, BFP 2, pp. 202–4.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: WAR AND MR. WHITEFIELD

  1. John Kinsey: Biographical sketch in LLP 2. On the political watershed ca. 1739 and the conflicts of the early 1740s: Alan Tully, William Penn’s Legacy: Politics and Social Structure in Provincial Pennsylania, 1726–1755 (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 23–37.

  2. War with Spain: The best source is a forgotten classic from the 1930s: Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies (Oxford, 1936), Chapters 1–3. Also useful is Robin Harding, The Emergence of Britain’s Global Naval Supremacy: The War of 1739–1748 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2010), pp. 9–25.

  3. “Troublesome times” and “dead trading:” Letter book of John Reynell, Vol. 4, 1738–41, at HSP, October 12 and December 15, 1739.

  4. International situation: Tim Blanning, Frederick the Great: King of Prussia (London, 2015), pp. 74–90.

  5. For George Whitefield’s career, the best handbook is still the biography by Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Reverend George Whitefield (London, 1890), because although Tyerman’s judgments may be dated he supplies a wealth of detail, carefully documented. His account of Whitefield’s American mission of 1739–41 is in Vol. 1, pp. 307–458. Also: Frank Lambert, “Subscribing for Profits and Piety: The Friendship of Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield,” in WMQ 50, no. 3 (July 1993): 529–54. As always, Mark Noll’s America’s God (Oxford, 2002) is essential, placing the Great Awakening in its wider context. So is Patricia Bonomi’s Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America (Oxford, 2003), especially pp. 158–70. However, in writing about Whitefield and Franklin I have mostly gone back to the primary sources, principally the Journals of Whitefield himself and his friend William Seward and the newspapers of the period.

  6. Charles Wesley: November 5, 1737, quoted in Tyerman, The Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, Vol. 1, p. 89. Vomiting: W. Jay, Memoirs of the Life and Character of the late Rev. Cornelius Winter (London, 1809), p. 26.

  7. Edmund Gibson, The Bishop of London’s Pastoral Letter, August 1st 1739 (London, 1739), especially pp. 10–16.

  8. “Partition wall”: Tyerman, The Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, Vol. 1, p. 189.

  9. Whitefield’s first visit to Philadelphia: George Whitefield, A Continuation of the Rev. Mr Whitefield’s Journal from his Embarking after the Embargo (Philadelphia, 1740), daily entries, November 3–25, 1739, pp. 118–47.

  10. William Seward: General Evening Post, May 8–10, 1735; Daily Gazetteer, December 16, 1738; Weekly Miscellany, August 25, 1739, and November 1, 1740; ODNB; and Tyerman, The Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, Vol. 1, pp. 163–68.

  11. Whitefield profile: AWM, December 27–30, 1739.

  12. Whitefield and Seward in Philadelphia, April–May 1740: William Seward, Journal of a Voyage from Savannah to Philadelphia etc, 1740 (London, 1740), daily entries, April 14–May 8, pp. 4–29; and George Whitefield, A Continuation of the Rev. Mr Whitefield’s Journal, after his Arrival in Georgia (London, 1741), daily entries, April 14–May 11, 1740, pp. 18–37.

  13. The Stono Rebellion: Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974), Chapter 12.

  14. Lewis Timothy’s cruelty: Ibid., pp. 245–47. On Franklin and slavery: Lemay 2, pp. 277−280; and the references in note 4 to Chapter Four above.

  15. Archibald Cummings, Faith Absolutely Necessary: Two Sermons (Philadelphia, 1740), Preface, pp. iii and x–xii.

  16. Obadiah Plainman and Tom Trueman: Pennsylvania Gazette, May 15, May 22, and May 29, 1740; and AWM, May 15–22, 1740.

  17. PG, June 12, 1740.

  18. English Methodists in the eighteenth century: J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660–1832 (Cambridge, UK, 2000), pp. 484–85.

  19. Franklin at the 1787 Convention: Michael Klarman, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (New York, 2016), pp. 194–95.

  20. Casualties in the Caribbean: Richard Harding, Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies, 1740−2 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 1991), pp. 114−16 and 137.

  21. Winter of 1740–41: John Reynell, February 19, 1741, from his letter book, Vol. 4, at HSP.

  22. BFP 2, pp. 419-446; and Samuel T. Edgerton Jr., The Myth of the Franklin Stove, in the journal Early American Life (June 1976).

  23. Parliament and American iron: House of Commons Journals, Vol. 22 (1732–37), pp. 849–54; and Vol. 23 (1738–41), pp. 107–18. Joseph Farmer, James Logan’s friend from Birmingham, England, was a gunsmith as well as an ironmaster, and one of the early investors in the Principio ironworks in Maryland. Farmer had been to America, studied the colonial iron industry, and acted as Logan’s advisor in 1726 when the Durham Iron Company was in process of formation. Farmer’s evidence to Parliament was dated April 20, 1737. His friendship with Logan: Logan to Farmer, October 15, 1733, in Logan Papers, Vol. 8, HSP.

  24. The Pennsylvania long rifle: Henry J. Kauffman, The Pennsylvania-Kentucky Rifle (Morgantown, PA, 1960), Chapter 2; and Joe Kindig Jr., Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle (Wilmington, DE, 1960), pp. 25–28. The inventor of the rifle is thought to have been Martin Meylin, who took up residence in 1711 on land rented from Andrew Hamilton: Samuel E. Wenger, Pequea Settlement 1710 (Lancaster, PA, 2010), pp. 48–50. A stone building reputed to be M
eylin’s gun shop can still be found on Long Rifle Road in Amish country four miles from Lancaster. In this part of Young Benjamin Franklin, I am indebted to Gary B. Nash and his book First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Philadelphia, 2002), in which—on pp. 55—Professor Nash makes the point that the Franklin fireplace was a hybrid of English and German craft traditions. My reading of First City in 2014 prompted me to make a series of visits to the Mercer Museum and its research library, where I developed the ideas in this section.

  25. BFP 3, p. 429; and Henry Chapman Mercer, The Bible in Iron: Pictured Stoves and Stoveplates of the Pennsylvania Germans (Doylestown, PA, 1961), pp. 29–31. A decorated fireback made at Durham in 1728 can be seen in James Logan’s house at Stenton. Numbers of German immigrants: Marianne Wokeck, “The Flow and the Composition of German Immigration to Philadelphia, 1727–1775,” in PMHB, Vol. 105, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 260−1. German culture in Pennsylvania: Aaron S. Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717–1775 (Philadelphia, 1996).

  26. Branson’s ironworks: Coventry Account Books, 1727–33, at HSP, Collection 212, Vol. 379. In the 1720s, Branson principally sold bar or pig iron or made farming tools or wagon parts. By 1733, as the economy prospered, deepening the demand for local manufactures, he had extended his product range to include pots and pans and sash weights for windows. The Coventry works sold bar iron to Mordecai Lincoln, whose homestead was fifteen miles away. In Philadelphia, Branson served on grand juries and acted as collector and trustee of donations for Whitefield’s orphanage in Georgia: George Whitefield, A Further Account of God’s Dealings (Philadelphia, 1746), endnote.

  27. The Warwick Furnace and the Franklin fireplace: Warwick Furnace Papers, 1726–75, MSC 149, in the Fackenthal Collection at the Spruance Library at the Mercer Museum. The key document is a lease and inventory of the furnace, December 17, 1741, signed by Robert Grace, which refers to the molds for the fireplace and stipulates the annual output. Robert and Rebecca Grace: PG, May 29, 1740. Mrs. Grace was the granddaughter of Thomas Rutter, the colony’s first ironmaster. Her first husband was the son of Samuel Nutt, who for many years had been Branson’s partner in the Coventry works and founded the Warwick Furnace in 1736.