The First American

by H. W. Brands

  Franklin’s morning bread had lost its effect by now, and he ordered dinner. The host and patrons were accustomed to sailors and other strangers, but this one particularly engaged their attention. From his worn and tattered clothing and his beardless, dirty face, he gave every indication of being a runaway. No one challenged him directly; his host was too canny a businessman to allow his patrons to frighten off other paying customers on mere suspicion. But by oblique queries—Been traveling long? Whither bound?—they probed to discover who might be chasing him and why. Franklin answered civilly but unforthcomingly; he kept his head in his plate and finished his meal as quickly as he decently could. He may have aroused additional suspicion when he asked about a bed where he could sleep the afternoon—and, as it must have seemed, hide out. But no one gainsaid him, and he recouped several hours more of the slumber he had missed the previous two nights. His host roused him for supper, which he ate as discreetly as dinner, before returning to bed. He slept the night through, waking the next morning almost as fit as when he had left Boston.

  As he gathered himself for his interview with Andrew Bradford, Franklin may have reflected that it was a good thing his beard had not yet begun to grow. At least he did not need a shave. But he could have used a bath—and some clean clothes, and breakfast. His money, however, was nearly gone, and he chose to husband what he had. So, without bathing or changing his clothes or eating, he headed off for the printing shop of Bradford the younger.

  To his surprise he was greeted there by Bradford the elder. William Bradford had practiced his craft in Philadelphia before moving to New York; now he had returned—on horseback, a more reliable but more expensive mode than Franklin could afford—to see old friends and check on his son. Franklin, after his friendly encounter with the father in New York, doubtless hoped that the older man’s presence would work to his benefit. It did, but not to the degree he desired. William Bradford made the introductions, and Andrew appeared favorably disposed, asking Franklin about himself and insisting that he join the two of them for breakfast. Unfortunately, he said, he had just engaged a journeyman to replace his untimely-departed assistant, and business did not allow adding another hand. He expected some special orders presently; when these arrived, he would need more help and could offer Franklin piecework.

  But there was another printer in town, he continued, a new man who might well desire a second. Franklin should call on him. If something worked out there, all the good; if not, Franklin was welcome to come back and lodge at the Bradford house till business warranted hiring him.

  Franklin finished his breakfast and extended thanks for the advice and the offer. As he headed out the door to the other printer’s, William Bradford accompanied him, saying he would show the boy the way. On arrival Bradford introduced himself and Franklin to Samuel Keimer. Neighbor, he said, here is a young man about your own business; perhaps you have work for him?

  Keimer may have been puzzled as to why this stranger should bring him a second stranger to hire, but he marked it up to the friendliness of the City of Brotherly Love. A voluble sort, Keimer began telling Bradford his plans for capturing the bulk of the printing business in Pennsylvania. Bradford, not wishing to interrupt the flow of useful intelligence, declined to reveal his own background or his connection to Keimer’s only rival. Instead he drew Keimer out by the artful question and the quizzical glance, till Keimer had divulged his entire business agenda and strategy. Franklin observed the performance with interest and no little admiration. It was apparent to Franklin—though obviously not to Keimer—“that one of them was a crafty old sophister and the other a mere novice.”

  What Franklin heard caused him to wonder whether he wished to work for such a novice; what he saw while walking around the shop as Keimer and Bradford talked doubled his doubts. The equipment was far inferior to what he had employed at James’s; it consisted of a broken-down press and a single worn-out font. Keimer was clearly unfamiliar with its operation and was currently engaged in the woefully inefficient method of composing directly into type—which precluded anyone’s assisting him. His project was an elegy to Aquila Rose, Andrew Bradford’s late journeyman, whose contributions to local civic life had transcended his print work. Rose operated a ferry on the Schuylkill River, served as clerk of the colonial assembly, and wrote well-received poems. If Franklin thought it at all odd that Keimer was eulogizing the former assistant of his rival, the thought simply added to the conception he was forming of Keimer as eccentric.

  But Franklin needed work and indicated he would be happy with whatever Keimer could offer. Keimer handed Franklin a composing stick and asked him to demonstrate; impressed by Franklin’s efforts, he said he would have work for him soon, although not just now. Franklin put the press into such working order as it was capable of, and said that when Keimer had finished setting the type for the elegy he would come back and print it. He left, shaking his head, if only to himself.

  He returned to Andrew Bradford’s and took up the invitation to lodge there. In the next few days Bradford found odd jobs for him, but not so many that when Keimer belatedly accepted his offer to print the Rose elegy, Franklin was inclined to say no. By then Keimer had acquired additional type and an order for some pamphlets; together these allowed him to hire Franklin on a regular basis.

  Briefly Franklin continued to live with Bradford while working for Keimer. The arrangement enabled him to form an opinion of the state of the printing craft in Pennsylvania, and he quickly judged it less than he was accustomed to. Bradford was “very illiterate”—an obvious handicap for one who lived on letters. Keimer was better read and indeed fancied himself a scholar. But in fact he was “very ignorant of the world”—including the printer’s craft. In addition he professed a strange variant of French Protestantism, one given to mystical trances and alarming revelations of the messianic age to begin at any moment. Having discovered too late the true identity of William Bradford—from Franklin—Keimer was suspicious of spies in his shop, and he announced one day that Franklin must cancel his housing arrangement with his rival or find other work. Franklin would have been happy to find other work had such existed, but none did. He inquired whether he might lodge with Keimer, who owned a house. But though Keimer had a house, he had no furniture, and no plans to purchase any; Franklin could not stay with him, he said. Instead the young man should seek a room with John Read, a carpenter who lived on Market Street.

  Franklin presented himself at the Read house, where he encountered the fifteen-year-old girl he had noticed, to his embarrassment, on his first morning in Philadelphia. By now, though, his trunk had arrived from New York, and with clean clothes and a few recently earned coins in his pocket, he felt much better able to stand scrutiny by the fair sex. “I made rather a more respectable appearance in the eyes of Miss Read than I had done when she first happened to see me eating my roll in the street.”

  Deborah Read evidently thought so too, either at once or shortly thereafter. Nor was she alone in her opinion. During the winter of 1724–25 Ben Franklin began forming a circle of friends, acquaintances, and admirers. He was a pleasant-looking young man, with a broad forehead, firm nose, and square jaw. On the tall side of average, he was thick through the shoulders and chest. His eyes were lucid, suggesting a lively intelligence; his well-formed mouth pursed when he was concentrating but smiled easily and often, revealing an equally well formed sense of humor. His self-confidence—never lacking—had grown since his arrival in Philadelphia. Having measured himself against the printers of a second city, he appreciated his skills more than ever. As much to the point, he had discovered—as every young person does who successfully leaves home—that he could make his way in the world. His native intelligence and common sense served him well; so too the social skills absorbed in the crowded bosom of the family he had left behind. The former gifts gave him the ascendancy in nearly any group he joined; the latter prevented that ascendancy from annoying any but the most envious in the group.

  As was the
case throughout the American colonies, the population of Philadelphia was growing rapidly, and had been for some time; one result was the large number of young people Franklin found to socialize with. His work with Keimer threw him into contact with the more literary-minded of the city; he was delighted to find a cohort of contemporaries who shared his interest in reading, questioning, and exploring the life of the mind generally. They debated topics classical and literary, current and political. Most were just starting on careers in the crafts or professions; few had much more to spend on books or beer than Franklin did. So they swapped books as they swapped arguments, and as long as they enlivened the conversation at one tavern or another, the proprietors did not mind that they nursed their glasses longer than was strictly profitable.

  In feudal times arose a saying that city air made a man free; Franklin certainly felt that way during his first winter in Philadelphia. To be sure, Philadelphia was no more a city than Boston, but in Boston he had borne the double burden of Puritan clerisy and sibling jealousy. The tolerant spirit of William Penn still protected Penn’s city half a decade after his death, and to a person of Franklin’s questioning temperament it was infinitely more congenial than the forced certitude of the Mathers.

  If Franklin was pleased to put Puritanism behind him, he was no less happy to be beyond the reach of his brother James. With James, Ben’s life had always been an emotional—and sometimes a physical—struggle. Ben was smarter than James and more talented, as James and Ben both knew. James had resented this, and in his resentment insisted on his prerogatives as master—not to mention older brother—all the more. But James’s insistence backfired. Ben, as the younger brother, naturally had to assert his independence; James’s attempts to suppress that independence simply provoked Ben to rebellion. Keimer was not half the printer James was, but because Ben’s relationship with Keimer was strictly business, he could accept his boss’s odd ways for the harmless idiosyncrasies they were. Acceding to idiosyncrasy for the sake of wages did not touch Ben’s self-esteem the way bending to brotherly dictate had.

  As a result, Franklin’s first winter in Philadelphia marked a vast improvement over recent circumstances in the city of his birth. “I lived very agreeably, forgetting Boston as much as I could and not desiring that any there should know where I resided, except my friend Collins who was in my secret and kept it when I wrote to him.” By chance a brother-in-law, Robert Homes, who sailed a commercial sloop between Massachusetts and the Delaware region, heard that his wife’s brother had landed in Philadelphia. Homes wrote Franklin a letter explaining the family’s distress at his disappearance and assuring him that all would be put right if he returned to Boston. Ben did not question Homes’s worthy intentions, but he replied that he had left Boston for good cause, was quite happy in Philadelphia, and had not the slightest desire to go back.

  Yet this seventeen-year-old master of his fate discovered he was not so independent as he thought. On the day Robert Homes received Franklin’s letter at New Castle, Delaware, the provincial governor of Pennsylvania, William Keith, happened to be present. Captain Homes evidently made some remark about Franklin, perhaps about the boy’s obduracy, and shared the letter with the governor. Keith was surprised and impressed to learn that the author of the letter was not even a man yet. Keith had arrived independently at the same opinion Franklin was forming of Philadelphia’s two printers: that they were a sorry pair for a province of promise and ambition. On the spot, apparently, Keith conceived a plan to keep Franklin in Philadelphia and encourage him in his craft.

  The governor returned to Philadelphia and paid a visit to Keimer’s print shop. Keimer and Franklin were working together in the window of the shop; both saw the governor and an obviously important friend approaching from across the street. Keimer had been hoping to win the official business of the province; here it came, he thought. He greeted the governor and the friend at the door and invited them in. To his chagrin they scarcely acknowledged him, instead seeking out Franklin. The governor belatedly welcomed Franklin to Philadelphia, kindly blamed him for hiding in the print shop and not presenting himself at the governor’s house, praised his skill and intelligence, and invited him to join Colonel John French of Delaware and himself for a glass of excellent Madeira kept by the proprietor of a tavern just down the street. Franklin wondered at the cause of this benign attention; his boss was stunned. “Keimer stared like a pig poisoned,” Franklin recalled.

  Over the wine, the governor again praised Franklin’s gifts and urged him to start his own printing business. Such a venture, he said, would have every chance of success, including his own support in procuring the public business of the province. Colonel French endorsed the governor’s comments and added, in tones that sounded authoritative, that he would similarly recommend that Franklin receive the public printing business of Delaware. (Delaware at this time was administratively attached to Pennsylvania, under a 1682 lease—of ten thousand years’ duration!—from the Duke of York to William Penn. The “lower counties,” as Delaware was called by Pennsylvanians, had their own legislature and executive council but shared Pennsylvania’s governor, currently Keith.)

  The notion of his own print shop certainly had occurred to Franklin—probably as soon as he sized up Bradford and Keimer. He may or may not have asked himself why Philadelphia was so deficient in the printing and allied trades. He had not been in town long enough to agree or disagree with the opinion given some years earlier by one disgusted scholar: “The reason there are no bookbinders here, where all sorts of other craftsmen are found, is that there is no scholarship here, and nothing counts but chopping, digging, planting, plowing, reaping.” Even at first glance Franklin could tell that the printed word mattered less in Philadelphia than in Boston, but that might simply reflect the deficiencies of the local printers. An enterprising and talented young man need not be discouraged by present conditions. Such, at any rate, was the expressed opinion of Governor Keith, who was placed to know.

  Franklin did not doubt his own talents, but he painfully felt his lack of capital. Without money for a press and related equipment, not even the most gifted printer could set up shop. At his present pay he might put aside sufficient funds to purchase equipment in several years, but hardly before then. An older man with an established reputation might borrow money, but who would lend to a lad just arrived from distant parts—a lad who, as the governor evidently knew from Robert Homes, had fled his contractual obligations there?

  Keith conceded that capital was a problem. Perhaps a relative could supply the initial funds? How about Franklin’s father?

  Franklin was dubious. He had no desire to return to Boston, certainly not to ask for money. For all he knew, James might try to enforce the apprentice agreement—out of jealousy if nothing else.

  But Keith refused to be deterred by Franklin’s family problems. He offered to write Josiah Franklin a letter laying out the plan he had just described and underscoring the bright prospects of the venture. Surely no father would deny his son the chance to pursue such an opportunity.

  The governor’s enthusiasm proved infectious. Reflecting, Franklin could scarcely believe his good fortune. Only weeks before, he had hauled himself up on Philadelphia’s wharf hungry, ragged, and all but penniless, a runaway apprentice. Now the governor of Pennsylvania, and another man who evidently spoke for Delaware, were promising every assistance in the establishment of his own print shop. How could his father say no?

  Franklin agreed to make the request. Winter weather had suspended most shipping to New England, but come spring he would take the first vessel for Boston. Meanwhile, as Keith suggested, prudence dictated keeping their plan to themselves; otherwise Franklin might run into trouble with his employer.

  Franklin returned to Keimer’s shop, where his still-stunned boss queried him as to what he and the governor had spoken of. Nothing of importance, Franklin replied; the governor was simply being polite. Keimer probably doubted he was hearing the whole story, and his doubts like
ly increased during the next several weeks, when Franklin accepted several invitations to dine with the governor. Franklin did not share with his employer how Keith conversed with him in the “most affable, familiar, and friendly manner imaginable,” and certainly not how the governor reiterated his support for an independent Franklin shop. If Keimer suspected that competition was afoot, he suppressed his suspicions sufficiently to keep Franklin on. The boy was a good printer and could not easily be replaced.

  By the time the shipping lanes reopened in April 1724, Franklin was more than ready to sail for Boston. His return voyage proved less eventful than his departing voyage had been, although the vessel he sailed on hit a shoal going down the Delaware Bay and began taking on water. The captain declined to stop for repairs, instead putting the pumps to work and putting the passengers to the pumps. Franklin did not begrudge the exercise, which warmed him against the chill of the North Atlantic spring. After two weeks they spied the heights of Beacon Hill; after a few more hours they landed at the Boston waterfront.

  Franklin had been gone seven months, and because Robert Homes had not been back since discovering his presence in Philadelphia, none of his family or friends—with the exception of the discreet Collins—had any idea where he was, or even if he was alive. To some considerable degree his deliverance from the dead, as it appeared, absolved him of whatever guilt remained from his running away. His father and mother embraced him; his siblings marveled at his fine suit of clothes, his watch and fob, and the pocketful of silver he dispensed so freely. If such was Philadelphia, it must be a fine place.