Citizen Ben

Why Benjamin Franklin represents the best of America

Any attempt to calculate the specific gravity of America at 250 should take time out to reflect on the life and legacy of Benjamin Franklin.

He was the oldest and most likeable of the Founding Fathers and the only one to have signed the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War.

Franklin’s mischievous originality asserted itself early on.

Born in 1706, he was the 15th child of staunch Boston puritans. His father, Josiah, was a candle-maker who had emigrated from Northampton in 1683. The family wasn’t rich and Ben was forced to leave school at 10.