Benjamin Franklin: The Shaping of Genius: the Boston Years

"Yes, it is. He was not a trained historian. He came to this book just as a writer of popular history. And he tells the story only up through Franklin leaving Boston, which is the prelude to what you would think of as the most important parts of Franklin’s life, which is his making it as a business man, his making it in Philadelphia, his success and then political career, and his scientific career. It short circuits Franklin’s life, but he turns those early years into an amazing story. Tourtellot has a great eye for detail. He went deep into a lot of different source material for it. And so, just the description of Boston street life, the Franklin family home, Franklin’s father’s relationship with his Uncle Ben, who comes to visit and has a falling out with the family, his detail on Franklin’s mother’s family, the kinds of life going on in Boston, it’s all truly vivid. It’s just a great read. It really is. Boston, as least among those residents that were Puritans—and how you classify that as is a difficult question—was a remarkably literate, and at least by some standards, learned society. His father was bookish and had lots of books in the house. At least, that’s what Franklin recalled. His father didn’t have a formal education. There were the means for a formal education. Franklin’s parents, because Benjamin was the tenth child, wanted to make him a tithe to the church and send him into the ministry, as a gift to God, as it were. So he went to Latin school with the hopes of going to Harvard. But they also saw that he probably just didn’t have the religious devotion to do it. And so they pulled him out. It was also a way to save money, as well, although I’m not saying that was the only reason they did it. “Franklin’s parents wanted to make him a tithe to the church and send him into the ministry… But they also saw that he probably just didn’t have the religious devotion to do it” So I think they recognize him as capable of doing the work and capable of being that kind of, relatively elite member of Puritan society, which the clergy were. They were the best educated and it was pretty clear that he could do the work. My sense is that they did recognize his intellectual ability, and it’s hard for me to imagine they didn’t recognise his intellectual curiosity. He was curious about so much, so many moving pieces in the natural, human and social worlds. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve really come to like Franklin a lot. He’s just a fascinating figure in that regard. In short, I think his parents did recognize something, but it’s hard to tell exactly how much he stood out from other children or from other boys in that society."