"Extraordinary freedom and great humility": A reinterpretation of deborah franklin

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Volumn 127, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 167-196

  Fry, Jennifer Reed ^a  

^a TEMPLE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 60949411999     PISSN: 00314587     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (78)

1. When writing for a scholarly audience, historians have traditionally refrained from addressing historical figures by their given names, instead referring to them by their family name. In writing about the distinct activities of husband and wife, relying on traditional methods produces a degree of confusion. In an effort to produce clear references, and rejecting the gendered connotations of referring to the subject as "Franklin's wife," I have chosen to refer to Deborah Read Rogers Franklin and Benjamin Franklin by their given names. By no means does this imply a level of disrespect to the Franklins or an assumption of familiarity with these historical figures, but rather should be perceived as an attempt to produce a clear, readable paper free of gendered language. In footnotes describing correspondence, Deborah Franklin and Benjamin Franklin are referred to as DF and BF respectively. For an example of how historians have dealt with this dilemma see Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Bloomington, 1992).
2. The life of Deborah Franklin is hardly mentioned in her husband's autobiography. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Genetic Text, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall (Knoxville, 1981), Deborah is mentioned a mere nine times, eight of which deal exclusively with the couples courtship and marriage. In reflecting on their marriage, Franklin notes "she prov'd a good & faithful Helpmate" (71) and "She assisted me cheerfully in my Business. " (76) Through his autobiography, Franklin develops an image of himself as a self-made man, the embodiment of American individualism. Linda K. Kerber notes that the language of individualism has limitations, especially for gender relations: "But that language is also inadequate, also limits the ways in which people think, because it has not been acknowledged that the language of individualism has been a male-centered discourse, that its imagery has traditionally served the self interest of men, whatever their class.
3. " (Kerber, "Can a Woman Be an Individual?: The Discourse of Self-Reliance," in American Chameleon: Individualism in Trans-National Context, ed. Richard O. Curry and Lawrence B. Goodheart (Kent, Ohio, 1991), 166. )
4. For a broader discussion of women and politics, see Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Ithaca, 2000);
5. Joan M. Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850 (New Haven, 1986);
6. Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1996);
7. Alan Tully, Forming American Politics: Ideas, Interests and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1994);
8. Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 2001).
9. Scholarship by Mary Beth Norton and Linda Kerber has also addressed this issue, focusing on the considerable contributions of women during the American Revolution. Given her declining health after 1765 and her death before the beginning of the Revolution, Deborah Franklin is unfortunately excluded from these two important reinterpretations. In Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston, 1980), Mary Beth Norton emphasizes the "troika" that defines women's roles of wife, mother, and household mistress. Norton concludes that while the line between the feminine sphere and the public sphere was less defined in the wake of the Revolution, woman's public activities remained firmly bound to her domestic responsibilities.
10. Focusing more on the political activities of revolutionary women, Linda Kerber's Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980), examines the implications of these activities for women in the nineteenth century. Noting that women had no intellectual tradition to facilitate their transition into the male-dominated world of politics, Kerber recognizes the limited effect the Revolution had on breaking down the barriers to women entering the public sphere. While women played an active role in revolutionary politics, the conservative nature of the Revolution necessitated that the proper boundaries for women's political activities be defined within traditionally female spheres.
11. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York, 1982).
12. Ormond Seavey, Becoming Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life (University Park, Pa. , 1988) 129.
13. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 71.
14. Claude-Anne Lopez, "Deborah Read Franklin," in American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York, 1999), 397.
15. Seavey, Becoming Benjamin Franklin, 188;
16. David T. Morgan, The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent: Benjamin Franklin's Years in London (Macon, Ga. , 1996), 17.
17. BF to DF, 9 Nov. 1765, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, et al. (New Haven, 1959-1982), 12:360. Cited hereafter as PBF.
18. Shelia Skemp, "Family Partnerships: The Working Wife, Honoring Deborah Franklin," and Larry E. Tise, "Introduction: Benjamin Franklin and the World of Women," in Benjamin Franklin and Women, ed. Larry E. Tise (University Park, Pa. , 2000), 20, xx.
19. Skemp, "Family Partnerships," 35.
20. Lopez, "Deborah Read Franklin," 396;
21. and Tise, "Introduction," xix.
22. "Sarah Read to Benjamin and Deborah Franklin: Bargain and Sale April 9, 1734," PBF, 1:362.
23. Edward M. Riley, "The Deborah Franklin Correspondence," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95 (1951): 239.
24. Pennsylvania Gazette, 9 Apr. 1730, PBF, 1:186.
25. Pennsylvania Gazette, 19 Aug. 1731, PBF, 1:219.
26. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 52. Quoted in Claude-Anne Lopez and Eugenia W. Herbert, The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family (1975; reprint, New York, 1985), 20.
27. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 60-61; Lopez and Herbert, The Private Franklin, 21.
28. "On April 9-11, 1734, Mrs. Read entered into a series of transactions with her son John and her two sons-in-law and daughters, Benjamin and Deborah Franklin and John and Frances Croker, by which she transferred title to the . . . lots and its dwelling house . . . but received back from the latter couples a lease for 99 years or life at the nominal annual rental of 'one Pepper corn only if demanded. '"(PBF, 1:363. )
29. Patricia Cleary, "'She Will Be in the Shop': Women's Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia and New York," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 119 (1995): 181-202.
30. Cleary, "She Will Be in the Shop," 199; Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 12-13, 95-96.
31. James Franklin Jr. to DF, 10 June 1760, and D. Weyman to DF, 26 Jan. 1756, Bache Collection, American Philosophical Society. Referenced in Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, ed. Isaac Minis Hays (Philadelphia, 1908), 4:183, 177.
32. Morgan, The Devious Dr. Franklin, 174.
33. Pennsylvania Gazette, 13 Aug. 1741, PBF, 3:245.
34. Law was labeled a nonjuror due to his stance as an Anglican clergyman who refused to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to William and Mary and their successors. Erwin Paul Rudolph, William Law (Boston, 1980), 7, 92.
35. Quoted in Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938), 127.
36. DF to BF, 6-13 Oct. 1766, PBF, 12:296.
37. Pennsylvania Gazette, 30 Jan. 1734, 11 Apr. 1734, and 12 Dec. 1734, PBF, 1:378.
38. Account Books, Bache Collection.
39. Isaac Norris was elected as the first speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, a post he held for fifteen years. The friendship between Deborah Norris and DF was especially close. Upon her death in 1767, DF wrote BF, "She was one of my first play maites and I raly Loved her. " (DF to BF, 16 May 1767, PBF, 14:158. ) Joseph Galloway was speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1766 to 1775 and was a delegate to the First Continental Congress. (DF to BF, 20-25 Apr. 1767, PBF, 14:135-36. ) Dr. Thomas Bond was a member of the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital and a founder of the University of Pennsylvania. (DF to BF, 12 Jan. 1767, PBF, 14:6. ) Susanna Wright, poet, was an active participant in Philadelphia's literary circles. (Susy Wright to DF, 4 Apr. 1765, in Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Hays, 4:190, 194. ) Duchè, an Episcopalian minister and rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, delivered the opening prayer for the First Continental Congress. (Jane Mecom to DF, before Aug 1770? in The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom, ed. Carl Van Doren (Princeton, 1950), 120. )
40. Paul W. Conner, Poor Richard's Politicks: Benjamin Franklin and His New American Order (New York, 1965), 215.
41. Charlotte Brown, "The Journal of Charlotte Brown, Matron of the General Hospital, with the English Forces in America, 1754-1756," in Colonial Captivities, Marches, and Journey, ed. Isabel M. Calder (New York, 1935), 190-91.
42. Brown, "Journal of Charlotte Brown," 191.
43. "Dr. Loyd" is unidentified.
44. BF to DF, 14 Jan. 1758, PBF, 7:359-60.
45. Daniel Fisher, "Extracts From the Diary of Daniel Fisher, 1755," ed. Mrs. Conway Robinson Howard, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 17 (1893): 263, 265, 270.
46. Fisher, "Extracts from the Diary," 271.
47. DF to BF, 12 Jan. 1767, PBF, 14:6;
48. D. Weyman to DF, 26 Jan. 1756, James Franklin Jr. to DF, 10 June 1760, and Robert Smith to DF, 25 Apr. 1766, Bache Collection, referenced in Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Hay, 4:177, 183, 195.
49. BF to DF, 5 Apr. 1757, PBF, 7:175.
50. BF to DF, 11 May 1765, PBF, 12:128.
51. Excerpt of Daybook, PBF, 7:168.
52. BF to DF, 2 June 1757, PBF, 7:232.
53. DF to BF, 20-25 Apr. 1767, PBF, 14:136-37.
54. Van Doren, ed. , Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom, 62.
55. Hannah Callender (Sansom) diary, American Philosophical Society. I am indebted to Susan Klepp for bringing this source to my attention.
56. For a broader discussion of the circulation of correspondence in colonial America, see Catherine La Courreye Blecki and Karin A. Wulf, eds. , Milcah Martha Moore's Book: A Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America (University Park, Pa. , 1997)
57. and David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill, 1997).
58. Christopher Hussey to DF, 27 Aug. 1766, and 2 Dec. 1766, in Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Hays, 4:196, 197.
59. Richard I. Shelling, "Benjamin Franklin and the Dr. Bray Associates," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 63 (1939): 283-85.
60. DF to BF, 9 Aug. 1759, PBF, 8:425.
61. Shelling, "Benjamin Franklin and the Dr. Bray Associates," 286n.
62. BF to DF, 25 Jan. 1756, PBF, 6:364; Claude-Anne Lopez, "Three Women, Three Styles: Catharine Ray, Polly Hewson, and Georgiana Shipley," in Benjamin Franklin and Women, ed. Tise, 60-61.
63. BF to DF, 10 June 1758, PBF, 8:90-91.
64. BF to DF, 27 Dec. 1755, PBF, 6:312-13.
65. Teedyuscung (ca. 1700-1763) was a Delaware Indian leader who worked with the English in an effort to insulate his tribe from an Iroquois takeover. (PBF, 7:16n. ) Unfortunately, Deborah's account of his visit has not been found. For BF's reference to DF's account, see BF to DF, 22 Nov. 1757, PBF, 7:276.
66. Printed in PBF, 7:169-170.
67. Printed in PBF, 7:200-202.
68. BF to William Dunlap, 4 Apr. 1757, PBF, 7:169.
69. DF to Lord Loudon, 20 Jan. 1758, Public Record Office, London. Copy held by American Philosophical Society. Thanks to Roy Goodman at the American Philosophical Society for his assistance in locating this source.
70. Lord Loudon to DF, 24 Jan. 1758, Public Record Office, London. Copy held by American Philosophical Society.
71. DF to BF, 22 Sept. 1765; DF to BF, 10 Feb. 1765; BF to DF, 4 June 1765; and DF to BF, 8-13 Oct. 1765, PBF, 12:274, 44, 169, 300.
72. DF to BF, 22 Sept. 1765, PBF, 12:270-71.
73. DF to BF, 22 Sept. 1765, PBF, 12:274; Deborah refers to James Tilghman "who had been one of the spokesmen for the deputation that waited on Hughes, October 5, to demand his resignation as stamp distributor. " (DF to BF, 8-13 Oct. 1765, PBF, 12:301-2n. )
74. DF to BF, 22 Sept. 1765, PBF, 12:271.
75. John Hughes, baker, had been appointed recorder of warrants and surveys in 1759 and he served as judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia from 1759 to 1761. " (PBF, 11:374n); John Holt to DF, 16 Feb. 1766, Bache Collection, referenced in Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Hays, 4:195.
76. See also James Parker to BF, 6 May 1766, PBF, 13:263.
77. Van Doren, ed. , Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom, 137.
78. Quoted in Alfred Owen Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries (New York, 1957), 209.