Franklin's Boston upbringing, cut short by financial necessity, sent him into a printing apprenticeship under his brother James that opened the world of books to him. He rose from runaway apprentice to Philadelphia's leading printer, then to internationally famous scientist and diplomat, becoming one of the few Founding Fathers to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in a modest house on Boston's Milk Street, across from the Old South Meeting House. His father Josiah, a tallow chandler, had seventeen children in total; Benjamin was the youngest son, a position he later joked left him destined for the clergy until family finances intervened.
Pulled from Boston Latin School at age ten for lack of funds, Franklin was instead apprenticed at twelve to his brother James's print shop, a position he loathed but which gave him unrestricted access to books and pamphlets passing through the shop. He ran away to Philadelphia at seventeen, arriving with almost nothing, and built a printing and publishing empire that made him wealthy by his forties.
Franklin's later achievements, from the 1752 kite experiment that demonstrated the electrical nature of lightning to his diplomatic mission securing French support during the American Revolution, made him one of the most internationally celebrated Americans of the eighteenth century. He remains the only man to have signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution.
Key people: Benjamin Franklin