The True Benjamin Franklin

by Sydney George Fisher

JOHN FOXCROFT

Among the Franklin papers in the State Department at Washington there are copies of a number of letters which Franklin wrote to Foxcroft, and in three of them—October 7, 1772, November 3, 1772, and March 3, 1773—he sends “love to my daughter.” There is also in Bigelow’s edition of his works[11] a letter in which he refers to Mrs. Foxcroft as his daughter. The letter I have quoted above was written while Franklin was in England as the representative of some of the colonies, and is addressed to him at his Craven Street lodgings. Foxcroft, who was postmaster of Philadelphia, seems to have been on friendly terms with the rest of Franklin’s family.

Mrs. Bache, whom Foxcroft mentions in the letter, was Franklin’s legitimate daughter, Sarah, who was married. The family at Burlington was the family of the illegitimate son, William, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. This extraordinarily mixed family of legitimates and illegitimates seems to have maintained a certain kind of harmony. The son William, the governor, continued the line through an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, usually known as Temple Franklin. This condition of affairs enables us to understand the odium in which Franklin was held by many of the upper classes of Philadelphia, even when he was well received by the best people in England and France.

In his writings we constantly find him encouraging early marriages; and he complains of the great number of bachelors and old maids in England. “The accounts you give me,” he writes to his wife, “of the marriages of our friends are very agreeable. I love to hear of everything that tends to increase the number of good people.” He certainly lived up to his doctrine, and more.

“Men I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they creep into corners or cover themselves with the darkness of night when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of a virtuous action.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. vii. p. 464.)

There has always been much speculation as to who was the mother of Franklin’s son, William, the governor of New Jersey; but as the gossips of Philadelphia were never able to solve the mystery, it is hardly possible that the antiquarians can succeed. Theodore Parker assumed that he must have been the son of a girl whom Franklin would have married if her parents had consented. Her name is unknown, for Franklin merely describes her as a relative of Mrs. Godfrey, who tried to make the match. Parker had no evidence whatever for his supposition. He merely thought it likely; and, as a Christian minister, it would perhaps have been more to his credit if he had abstained from attacking in this way the reputation of even an unnamed young woman. An English clergyman, Rev. Bennet Allen, writing in the London Morning Post, June 1, 1779, when the ill feeling of the Revolution was at its height, says that William’s mother was an oyster wench, whom Franklin left to die of disease and hunger in the streets. The gossips, indeed, seem to have always agreed that the woman must have been of very humble origin.

The nearest approach to a discovery has, however, been made by Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, in his essay entitled “Who was the Mother of Franklin’s Son?” He found an old pamphlet written during Franklin’s very heated controversy with the proprietary party in Pennsylvania when the attempt was made to abolish the proprietorship of the Penn family and make the colony a royal province. The pamphlet, entitled “What is Sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander,” after some general abuse of Franklin, says that the mother of his son was a woman named Barbara, who worked in his house as a servant for ten pounds a year; that he kept her in that position until her death, when he stole her to the grave in silence without a pall, tomb, or monument. This is, of course, a partisan statement only, and reiterates what was probably the current gossip of the time among Franklin’s political opponents.

There have also been speculations in Philadelphia as to who was the mother of Franklin’s daughter, the wife of John Foxcroft; but they are mere guesses unsupported by evidence.

From what Franklin has told us of the advice given him when a young man by a Quaker friend, he was at that time exceedingly proud, and also occasionally overbearing and insolent, and this is confirmed by various passages in his early life. But in after-years he seems to have completely conquered these faults. He complains, however, that he never could acquire the virtue of order in his business, having a place for everything and everything in its place. This failing seems to have followed him to the end of his life, and was one of the serious complaints made against him when he was ambassador to France.

But he believed himself immensely benefited by his moral code and his method of drilling himself in it.