Benjamin Franklin was an American printer, author, diplomat, philosopher, and scientist, whose many contributions to the American Revolution ranked him among the country’s greatest statesmen.

Benjamin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a candler by trade. Josiah had 17 children. Out of these 17 children Benjamin was the 15^th child and the 10^th son. Benjamin’s mother, Abiah Folger, was his father’s second wife.

After Benjamin’s attendance at grammar school from age eight to ten, he was taken into his fathers candling business.

At age thirteen Benjamin left his father’s business and was apprentice to his brother James Franklin, who had recently returned from England with a new printing press. Benjamin learned the printing trade and devoted his spare time to his education.

In 1721 his brother James established the New England Courant, and Benjamin at the age of fifteen, was busily occupied in delivering the newspaper by day and composing articles at night. These articles published anonymously won wide notice for their observations on current scenes. In 1722, as a consequence of a bias and offensive article, James was imprisoned for a month and forbidden to publish his paper.

As a result of disagreements with James, Benjamin left Boston and went to Philadelphia, arriving in October 1723. There he worked at his trade and made lots of friends. Among these friends was Sir William Keith, the provincial governor of Pennsylvania. Sir William persuaded Benjamin to go to London to complete his training as a printer and to purchase the equipment to start his own printing establishment in Philadelphia. Benjamin took his advice, arriving in London in December 1724. Without receiving the help promised to him by Sir William, Benjamin found himself, at age eighteen, without means in a strange city. After this he obtained employment at two of the foremost printing houses in London, Palmer’s and Watt’s. His accomplishments soon won him the recognition of a number of the most distinguished figures in the literary and publishing world.

In October 1726, Benjamin returned to Philadelphia and resumed his trade. The following year, with many others, he organized a discussion group known as the Qunto, which later became the American Philosophical Society. In September 1729, he bought the Pennsylvania Gazette, a dull, poorly edited weekly newspaper, which he made both entertaining and informative. In 1730 he married Deborah Read (1705-74), a Philadelphia woman whom he had known before his trip to England.

Benjamin engaged in many public projects. In 1731 he founded the probably, first public library in America, chartered in 1742 as the Philadelphia Library. He first published Poor Richard's Almanac in 1732, under the pen name Richard Saunders. In 1736 Benjamin became clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the next year was appointed deputy postmaster of Philadelphia.

In 1747 Benjamin began his electrical experiments. He advanced a tenable theory of the Leyden jar, supported the hypothesis that lightening is an electrical phenomenon and proposed an effective method of demonstrating it. His plan was published in London and carried out in England and France before he himself performed his experiment with a kite in 1752. Benjamin also became a fellow of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge and in 1753, was awarded its Copley Medal for distinguished contributions to experimental science.

In 1748 Benjamin sold his printing business and in 1750 was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which he served until 1764.

In 1757, the Pennsylvania Assembly sent Benjamin to England to petition the King for the right to levy taxes on proprietary lands. After he completed his mission, he remained in England for five years as the chief representative of the American colonies.

Benjamin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, where he remained until 1764, when he once again returned to England as the agent of Pennsylvania. In 1776 he was interrogated before the House of Commons regarding the effects of the Stamp Act upon the colonies. Soon new plans for taxing colonies spread to Parliament and Benjamin was divided between his devotion to his native land and his loyalty as a subject of George III of Great Britain. Finally, in 1775, Benjamin acknowledged war. Sailing for America after an absence of eleven years, he reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, to find that the battles of Lexington and concord had already been fought. He was chosen as a member of the Second continental Congress, serving on ten of its committees, and was made postmaster general, an office he held for one year.

In 1775 Benjamin traveled to Canada to get the support of the Canadians in the Revolution. Upon his return he became on of the five chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. He was also one of the signers of the documents, addressing the assembly with the characteristic statement: "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

On February 6, 1778, Benjamin negotiated the treaty of commerce and defensive alliance with France that represented, in effect, the turning point of the American Revolution. Seven months later, he was appointed by Congress as the first minister from the U.S. to France.

In 1781 Benjamin, John Adams, and John Jay were appointed to conclude a treaty of peace with Great Britain. The final treaty was signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783.

In March 1785, Benjamin, at his own request, left his duties in France and returned to Philadelphia, where he was immediately chosen president of the Pennsylvania executive council (1785-87). In 1787 he was elected a delegate to the convention that drew up the U.S. One of Benjamin’s last public acts was to sign a petition to the U.S. Congress, on February 12, 1790, as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, urging the abolition of slavery and the suppression of the slave trade. Two months later, on April 17, Benjamin died in his Philadelphia home at age eighty-four.