A big project at work that will run through the end of the semester has taken me temporarily away from some of my other projects, but I’m doing what I can to keep my other irons in the fire. Today marks a significant moment in the history of British North America, even if no one recognized it at the time. How could they have? It was three hundred years ago today, October 6, 1723, that the seventeen-year-old runaway Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia. Several weeks previously he had fled Boston and the indentured servitude contract he had signed with his abusive older brother, unsuccessfully sought printer’s work in New York City, and finally made his way on that Sunday morning to Market Street. In his Autobiography, written in late middle age, Franklin remembered that “my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refus’d it, on account of my rowing; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro’ fear of being thought to have but little.”

I have a fairly firm grasp of Civil War historiography but I must say that I still have a steep learning curve when it comes to that of the Colonial and Revolutionary eras. One can’t understand the history without knowing the historiography behind it. Colonial and Revolutionary War memory is much more involved than that of the War of the Rebellion, and yet surprisingly thin. I don’t understand why. As for Franklin’s sojourn itself, it was not until 1980 that a historian proved conclusively that it was indeed on October 6 that Franklin arrived in Philadelphia. Apparently there had been talk after that discovery of designating October 6 “Ben Franklin Day” in Philadelphia, sort of like the annual Patriots Day in several New England states. That never came to pass, but later today the University of Pennsylvania is hosting a three hundredth anniversary celebration from 12:00-2:00 pm. Above we see an illustration by the noted children’s book illustrator E. Boyd Smith from a 1916 edition of Franklin’s Autobiography showing the young man starting his new life three hundred years ago today.

Addendum: There seems to be slate of events around Philadelphia later this morning, including one at the American Philosophical Society at which the document proving October 6 as the date of Franklin’s arrival will be on view.