by Nick Bunker
Franklin’s patron Andrew Hamilton (ca. 1676−1741), who dominated the politics of Pennsylvania in the 1730s. By Adolf Ulrick Wertmüller, 1808. Courtesy of the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection.
The leading Freemason in Philadelphia, and also Pennsylvania’s chief justice, William Allen (1704−80), painted from life in 1746 by Robert Feke. Although by the 1760s Allen and Franklin were political enemies, earlier they had been united in their opposition to Quaker pacifism during the wars with France and Spain.
The Scotsman Cadwallader Colden (1689−1776): medical doctor, official surveyor of New York, and scientist, who met Franklin in 1743 and helped put him on the path to his electrical experiments.
Deborah Read Franklin, painted in about 1759—when she was about fifty-five—by Benjamin Wilson.
The earliest known portrait of Benjamin Franklin, painted by Robert Feke in about 1746, when Franklin was forty.
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