9781422277591

Drawing of Philadelphia as it appeared in the 1720s, when Benjamin Franklin arrived from Boston.

Benjamin’s fortunes soon improved. He found work, made a good name for himself, and in 1725 ventured to London for a year—the first of several trips he was to make across the Atlantic. He returned when an old friend offered him work in Philadelphia. By 1730 he owned his own business. In September 1730, Deborah Read—the woman who had laughed at him seven years earlier, became his wife. Theirs was a common-law marriage . Franklin had courted Deborah before he first sailed to London five years earlier, but after he left, she had married another man. Her husband vanished on a trip to the West Indies, and it was rumored that he had died there. However, because there was no proof of his death, Franklin’s marriage to Deborah could not be officially consecrated in a church. Despite this, their partnership lasted forty-five years. Franklin and Deborah had two children: Francis (who died in childhood) and Sarah. Deborah also helped Franklin raise his illegitimate son, William. For the next eighteen years, Franklin’s business interests flourished. He published his own newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette , which remained one of the most influential American newspapers until the end of the century. In 1732 he started printing an almanac , which he called Poor Richard’s Almanack . An almanac

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