Entrepreneur

1706 - 1790

Franklin was one of the most incredible Americans who ever lived. He helped shape our young country’s destiny and was amazingly, far ahead of his time. He became a very successful entrepreneur, Statesman, diplomat, educator, inventor, author, printer, philosopher, scientist, shopkeeper, musician, economist, public servant and American hero.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of seventeen children, Benjamin completed only two years of formal education through age ten. He became largely a self-educated individual with a passion for self-improvement. With a tremendous thirst for reading everything he could, Franklin developed a step-by-step system for building his moral character. He also taught himself several languages, including French, Italian and Spanish.

In 1728, at the age of 22, Franklin opened his own printing office in Philadelphia and published a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette. A few years later, he started publishing his famous “Poor Richard’s Almanac” under the fictional name of Richard Saunders. For the next 25 years he printed hundreds of sayings and words of wisdom such as: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

Franklin became known as a great inventor as well. Some of his most famous inventions include bifocals, the Franklin stove and the lightning rod.

As a brilliant civic leader in early America, his ideas helped develop the Philadelphia library that became the first circulating library in the country. He also developed a municipal police and fire force, a city hospital, the American Philosophical Society, the first profitable and efficient national postal system, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Through hard work and thriftiness, Franklin acquired a great deal of wealth. He would never have to work again if he ever decided not to. That never became the case.

Although he was not actively seeking to get into politics he felt it was his civic duty as an American to come to the aid of his great country when they called upon him.

In 1776, Franklin was instrumental in helping draft “The Declaration of Independence,” the foundation for our country’s freedom. He said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, and one of its greatest citizens, leaves us with these parting words:

“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”