In this first of a series of posts about people who do or who may have had autism, let’s talk about one of our Founding Fathers: Benjamin Franklin. Despite being one of the most influential intellectuals of the Revolutionary War era, he didn’t have much schooling, carrying on his studies through extensive reading all his life. Reading was something everyone in his house did. The youngest son and fifteenth child in his family, he would go on to achieve many things: writing numerous books, inventing many things, and coming up with many ideas that still affect all of us.
At an early age, Ben expressed interest in becoming a sailor, but his father, Josiah, thought he had the makings of a scholar and even a minister. He became one of the best students in his class. After only two years of schooling, he was forced to leave and work in his father’s candle-making shop, but he wasn’t happy. His mother, Abiah, suggested he become a printer, to which he agreed. He later went to work in the printing shop owned by his older brother James. James later started printing his own newspaper, The New England Courant. Knowing James would never print anything he wrote, Ben used a pseudonym, Silence Dogood, and wrote a series of fifteen letters to the paper, all of which were published. [If you have seen the Nicolas Cage film National Treasure, you may remember that the Silence Dogood letters were used as a secret code.]
As you would expect, James was not happy to learn he was unknowingly publishing his brother’s writing. Finally fed up with James’s harsh treatment of him and knowing he made many enemies with his writings criticizing city officials, Ben ran away to New York and eventually reached Philadelphia, working for Samuel Keimer. Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania at the time, offered to let Ben set up his own printing house in town. As Ben received no money from his father, Keith agreed to support Benjamin himself and even sent him to London for what he would need to establish his business. Having no letters of credit from Keith, he got a job at Watts’s, becoming one of their best printers. Returning to Philadelphia, he went back to Keimer and became his foreman, mending new letters, making ink, creating engravings by scratching lines into copper, and printing pictures in books and pamphlets. He believed words have power, can make people laugh or cry, and were the only way to spread ideas. I couldn’t agree more with him there. If only more people now would use words to spread positive ideas instead of fake stories and self-centered self-glamorizing fiction.
Hugh Meredith, another man who worked for Keimer, decided to partner with Ben and start their own print shop. That same year, 1730, he married Deborah Read. He began printing The Pennsylvania Gazette and issued both the first medical book and novel published in the colonies. He was later appointed clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly and allowed to print money and laws as well, and later became postmaster of Philadelphia and eventually the colonies. By the time he was in his thirties, he had a prosperous business, a loving wife, two healthy children (he had another who died young), and many friends. I say, not bad for a runaway apprentice. He also encouraged people to start discussion clubs called juntoes all over Philadelphia. He presented many ideas to his own junto, such as paving Philadelphia’s streets and starting fire departments, public libraries, and police forces, and even the Pennsylvania Hospital.
In 1733, he started printing his own almanac, Poor Richard’s Almanac, which quickly became the most popular book in the colonies. He also started a number of grammar schools, headed a committee establishing schools for African Americans and Native Americans and made sure poor children could come to school for free. He also asked himself every day what good he would do and did, keeping true to a list of virtues he made himself. He later retired from printing and began working with what would become our modern understanding of electricity. He became famous for using a key tied to a kite for an experiment, which granted him membership in the Royal Society in England, and later invented his own lightning rod – protecting buildings from fires caused by lightning strikes. He had previously invented the Franklin stove, which was more fuel efficient, but he refused to patent it – reasoning that his invention was for the public benefit and hoping others might improve on the concept. Ben’s later inventions included bifocal eyeglasses, a new kind of streetlight, the armonica, and a new type of bathtub. He taught himself French, Spanish, Italian, how to play the harp, guitar, and violin and later earned honorary degrees from St. Andrew’s University and Oxford University.
He was also very active in local politics. He tried to get the Penn brothers to be cooperative with each other and not be so focused on profit. He encouraged the colonies to act with unity and made the first political cartoon to make people support the French and Indian War. He even got a group of people who were known as The Paxton Boys to leave the Native Americans alone when they were massacring them and wrote a pamphlet condemning their actions. He convinced Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act and the import tax. He joined in the creation of the Declaration of Independence. He convinced the French to give us aid during the Revolution.
After the Revolution, Ben was asked by Congress to carry out peace negotiations with England and set up commercial ventures and agreements with other countries. Upon returning to a hero’s welcome in America, he served three terms as “President” of Pennsylvania. In 1787, he helped write the Constitution and supported George Washington as head of the convention. He also committed to the cause of abolishing slavery in his last days, being named president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, mocking a congressman who defended slavery in a letter, and petitioning Congress to not only free all the slaves but to give them an education and opportunity to earn a living as well.
When Benjamin Franklin passed away in 1790 at the age of eighty-four, many people in American and France mourned him. Over 20,000 people attended his funeral, the largest in Philadelphia’s history. Take that, Trump. Even though he didn’t have much of an education, Benjamin Franklin accomplished and invented many things, made peace negotiations with many countries for us, gave a voice to the people, and saw a new nation born. He always did his best to help others as well. If you ask me, that is what it means to make a country such as America “great”.
Many web sites include Ben Franklin on lists of people who, if alive today, would have been diagnosed with neurodivergence or autism. In Ben’s case, this would probably have been Type One autism – or Asperger’s as it was known in the past. According to Autism Parenting Magazine Ben was fascinated with sounds and could mimic bird calls and trains. I also can do imitations, from Rod Serling to Bullwinkle J. Moose. Ben had a compulsion with order, and was observed to rock back and forth and wave his hands when he was non-verbal. Back in his day, the term used to describe him was “eccentric” and his mind certainly worked in a different way. His achievements and inventions would not have been possible without his different way of looking at things. There is a real greatness in that which I hope readers can see in themselves.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” = Benjamin Franklin
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