While watching the grandchildren, ages 9 and 12 years, I asked if they knew who Benjamin Franklin was. The older boy said, “He was one of the presidents, right?” The other, “He was the president that looked like a girl—Oh, and he is the one on a hundred dollar bill.” I thought through my disappointment and contemplated how fast our society and the knowledge base that gets you ahead has changed. It does not appear to include figures from our early national mythology. I reassured myself that when I look at the stories, these kids read, there are good moral and practical lessons taught. In the end, how much English national mythology do I really know —that was as relevant 250 years (when Benjamin was a British citizen) before my 10th birthday as this question about Franklin is for these guys now. My grandchildren are missing out on our early history and this is not just about school. This was something I got at home as well. Even Disney played a role —I remember the Disney cartoon of Franklin with the kite from early childhood……….
Consider: my grandfather served in WWI. I never thought much about WWI—we entered the war late, it was not a glorious fight by modern standards, and the uniforms were funky as were the films of the time showing the soldiers. My generation grew up on WWII and I can stand against virtually anyone regarding “trivial pursuits” and WWII——both theatres. We knew and valued WWII! When I learned more about WWI as an adult, I was taken aback. If I got to choose, I would vote down being a Marine in the Pacific first, then an infantryman in WWI before virtually any other assignment covering the two wars. So knowing about our “mythology” actually is something even my generation can have lapses about. Maybe it was just a matter of time before the old stuff loses its shine and we should accept that as inevitable. Resist it, yes!—-but accept the inevitable loss because we don’t appear to control them.
What’s the problem we want to solve when talking about our history? It is nice, not to mention handy to have a common history to draw on. That has been fading even before the revisionist orientation to teaching history took hold in the last ten years. I want for those who are not that interested, to have some understanding of how to solve problems in different settings and hopefully draw from the old to get a better appreciation on fixing the new problems. Can we draw a lesson from our past to say, “we can do better than that if we have to do it over?” The news from Afghanistan this last month hammers that home in so many ways, doesn’t it?
The rest is icing on the cake, like appreciating that their problems were not at their root, that different from ours’.
Observations: I know from our history, the name of Cotton Mather. He was a Puritan Minister of renown in Boston in the 1600’s. He played a role in the Salem Witch Trials. He was prominent in the Boston that found Benjamin’s father recently immigrated from England. What caught my eye about Cotton Mather: He lost a wife and three children to a measles epidemic. He gave thought (this was during the Enlightenment) to what people could do to avoid the suffering such diseases caused. He was open to man finding treatments for disease and did not (as opposed to many of faith in New England at the time) find this contrary to God’s plan for us. A smallpox epidemic came to Boston. Cotton was aware from his reading of the process of inoculation for smallpox with smallpox. This practice was communicated to England through the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul and it received publicity in the early 1700’s. Mather encouraged this approach in Boston. A Dr. Boylson began to inoculate, starting with his son and two slaves. Then (as now), his example fed rage and hatred. He was threatened with lynching. The only physician in Boston with a degree from England publicly ordered him to stop and accused him of spreading the infection. Cotton Mather and other ministers came to the rescue and supported Dr. Boylson. With rancor and no resolution of the matter in the court of public opinion, the smallpox epidemic faded away.
I love the irony that an arrogant conservative minister from colonial days can serve as an icon for a developing and controversial medical technology.
Benjamin Franklin was an ambitious man and was primarily a printer in his early career. He became famous for his efforts to increase circulation of his paper and notably wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac. He was reliably a man who cultivated European thinking in the midst of the Enlightenment. Pennsylvania and more importantly, Philadelphia was a place of religious tolerance relative to Boston where he grew up. Of interest, he pursued his future wife and was turned down by her father—his prospects did not look good enough. She married and her husband went to England and deserted her. Franklin socialized with him in England and knew that he married a second woman. Deborah was childless and with few prospects given this circumstance. Back in Philadelphia, Franklin fathered a child out of wedlock and publicly recognized the boy as his. The mother’s identity was never revealed publicly (and his records fail to identify her as well). Benjamin’s prospects for marriage were hindered by this noble act. He and Deborah signed legal papers that protected them both if her original husband came back, and became common law marriage partners—-for life.
Who knew?
Deborah’s relationship to Benjamin is the subject of much historical gossip; they only lived together two of the last seventeen years of their marriage (she died of a stroke while he was in Europe). His written documents describing their relationship are, to say the least, nice but not suggestive of a deep and lasting passionate love. One theory is that they became emotionally distanced after the death of five year old Frankie Franklin —- to smallpox. Benjamin Franklin was an advocate of smallpox inoculation. One rumor lies in the possibility that Deborah resisted giving her son the vaccine and his death proved to be the ruin of their relationship. This writer makes clear a public explanation was required when anti-vaccination advocates publicly wrote of his son dying from a smallpox inoculation. There have always been trolls to inflict suffering on us…….He wrote that this was not true—they delayed vaccination because of his illness with “flux” and that the smallpox infection took him before the inoculation could occur. It was a terrible loss to them both. Then as now, such a loss often does lead to emotional distancing within a marriage.
Unrelated: a wonderful correspondence with his sister who was devout and angry about his belief system (Deism): “I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. And the scripture assures me that at the last day, we shall not be examined for what we thought, but what we did; and our recommendation will not be that we said, Lord, Lord, but that we did good to our fellow creatures.”
Lastly, a description of the state of the area we now know as Eastern Pennsylvania: political controversies of the day were, “symptoms of a wider malaise, as the Quaker colony became in the 1740’s a more polarized acrimonious society. New sources of conflict had emerged…The war, the economic downturn, religious strife, bitter and sectarian, and the ethnic rivalries as well, not to mention the old familiar struggle between the town of Philadelphia and the farmers inland, the burden of taxes each one should share, and the rents the Penn family required in return for grants of land….” With just a few updated adjustments, his sounds rather contemporary to me.
Addendum: Franklin owned at least one slave early in his life. He advertised the sale of slaves in his papers. Many of our contemporaries would fault him and his society for this. Forgetting how we would behave and think were we raised in other societies, while in that colonial society, two interesting developments: Quakers were quick to spurn slavery and disown it—before the American Revolution, advocating that others do the same. Franklin, no Quaker, agreed and advocated for the end of slavery (also before the Revolution) as he aged. Even with a rigid (Puritanical?) definition of morality, one
can redeem oneself.
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