APRIL 2, 1722
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MORNING
Apprentice Benjamin Franklin has a secret.
On this raw spring day, twenty-five-year-old James Franklin’s New-England Courant is publishing a unique editorial written by an anonymous writer. The “epistles,” in the author’s words, make fun of everything from hoop skirts to the Puritan Church in a warm but sly voice. Usually, the Courant runs stories about Boston politics, but that has grown stale. No one knows the real identity of the new author, who mysteriously chooses to slide the editorial under an office door in the dead of night. The only clue is a woman’s byline in the name of “Silence Dogood.”
The pseudonym hints at trouble. Reverend Cotton Mather is still very much a political force in Boston, yet Silence Dogood is a slap at the reverend. Upon the death of his daughter, Mather preaches a sermon called “The Silent Sufferer”—Silentiarius in the Latin.
Thus, Silence.
Mather’s previous treatise on Christian behavior, Bonifacius, exhorts men and women to “do good.”
Dogood.
But nobody figures out the clue. James Franklin, the older brother whom Benjamin Franklin is contractually obligated to serve, publishes the Courant. He prints Silence Dogood’s saga on a whim, hoping the article will be a break from the snark and sarcasm that so often is found in the Courant. The story is an instant hit. That day’s edition of the newspaper sells out as Boston begins buzzing about the true identity of this curious woman Silence.
James Franklin does not know who the woman is but wants to meet her.
Yet Silence Dogood stands next to James all day, every day.
For the middle-aged widow is actually his brother, Benjamin Franklin.
The deceit begins one year earlier as Boston is hit hard by a smallpox epidemic. Cotton Mather spins his “do good” phrase to defend those who believe in treating the disease through inoculations and quarantine. After losing a wife and three children to measles almost a decade earlier, Mather has investigated new research being done at the Royal Society in London on treating infectious disease and encouraged Boston physicians to adopt these practices. In an open letter to the Boston Gazette on July 31, 1721, he refers to a leading proponent of inoculation as a “good genius.”
That makes the anti-inoculation James Franklin furious. A physical man with a temper and a habit of using his fists, the printer fights back by launching his own newspaper—one that will harshly criticize Cotton Mather. The first edition of the New-England Courant is one sheet of paper with editorials printed on both sides. It costs four pennies. The masthead lets it be known that the Courant will be “a jack of all trades” in terms of stories and subjects—meaning it will take on the religious elite in Boston.
As a man who spent his early training in London, James Franklin has a touch of the snob. He considers himself an intellectual and does not appreciate Cotton Mather talking down to simple tradesmen such as himself. His goal in life is not to run a small print shop but to edit a major newspaper that compares with London’s greatest.
Smallpox seems a good way to build readership. As fear of the disease sweeps through Boston and deaths soar to 130 in September, the Courant grows more popular. Some 844 will die between April 1721 and February 1722. James Franklin is a literate man, fond of such writers as Daniel Defoe, whose book Robinson Crusoe came out just three years ago. He regularly brings in guest writers to voice an opinion in the Courant but also does much of the writing himself. James leans heavily on satire to attack the pro-inoculation believers, even doubting that the epidemic is a disease at all, writing of the “artificial pox.”
Benjamin Franklin has a different view. He is not anti-inoculation but sides with his brother against Cotton Mather on general principle. At the Courant, he sets type, delivers the paper, and runs other errands—everything except writing. It’s all part of the nine-year contract with his brother to learn the printing trade. Their father, Josiah, once envisioned Benjamin as a minister, not as a tradesman, and wished him to attend Harvard.
The ministry was once an obvious path for young Ben. The Franklin family’s immersion in the church is complete. They attend a Congregationalist service twice a week, with the Sunday sermon often lasting two hours or more. At age five, the boy was reading the Bible, as well as other spiritual books such as Pilgrim’s Progress. By seven, he was writing poetry, which Josiah proudly sent to relatives back in London. At eight years old, young Benjamin was top of his class at the prestigious Boston Latin School.*
Money problems force Josiah Franklin to end all dreams of Harvard. Benjamin is shattered not to graduate from Boston Latin, but his father is just being practical: the college graduates more ministers than New England can absorb. So Josiah teaches his younger son the trade of chandler—candle making—beginning at the age of ten. Having a trade is vital to financial success in colonial Massachusetts, and the father is only looking out for young Ben, whom he adores.
Josiah Franklin is relentless in his work ethic, demanding that Benjamin pass long days cutting wicks and filling molds. However, his wife, Abiah, insists that her son be allowed time away from the shop. In this way, young Benjamin Franklin grows strong through long days of swimming in the ocean and nearby ponds, adding a physical heft to his intellectual brilliance.
At age twelve, Benjamin Franklin walks away from the candles and into his brother’s print shop. He joins the thousands of young people in New England who endure a life of servitude as apprentices. His role as apprentice provides him with a place to sleep, simple clothing, and sparse meals, but little else. He is not allowed to seek other employment and is paid only a small salary.*
And he endures regular abuse. James is often cruel, hitting and slapping Ben over mistakes and petty frustrations. Money is tight. James is soon to marry, assuming the responsibility of feeding a wife in addition to his teenaged brother.
Yet there is one escape for Benjamin Franklin: reading. Among the Courant’s contributors is a tanner named Nathaniel Gardner, who enjoys intellectual debate. He gives Benjamin free rein of his considerable library.
The teenager absorbs every word. He even stops going to church on Sunday to make more time for reading, displeasing his parents.
The Courant eventually loses steam. More than four hundred Bostonians die of smallpox in October 1721 alone, and the city is exhausted from the disease. When a bomb is thrown into Cotton Mather’s home, James seizes the opportunity to sensationalize the news. The miscreant who tried to hurt Mather opposed inoculation, and the Courant ran wild with the story.
Benjamin Franklin watches all this with a close eye. Even though he has visited the Mather home, he is not a fan of the reverend. Benjamin no longer follows the same Puritan teachings of Cotton Mather and his own devout parents, instead considering himself a “thorough deist.” He still quotes obscure Bible passages from memory, priding himself on a thorough knowledge of the good book. But Franklin no longer believes in the divine birth of Jesus Christ, the power of God to answer prayers, or that a supreme deity controls the fate of mankind.*
Yet he has not completely turned his back on Christianity during this intellectual struggle. The balance between Deism and the faith of his childhood will bedevil Benjamin Franklin for decades to come.
But now, in 1722, in an attempt to spoof Boston’s religious elite, the teenager is inspired by the satire and humor found in British newspapers. He also learned calligraphy when he attended school. So Benjamin decides to write his first story for the Courant in a disguised hand. It is easy for him—and necessary. He knows James would never publish anything by his brother in the Courant.
London’s Spectator newspaper features articles written under pen names. Benjamin Franklin spins this into Silence Dogood. Knowing James will relish a jab at Cotton Mather, Ben begins his first story with mention of an “Educated Minister.” Everybody knows who that is.
Silence Dogood is clearly an intelligent woman, writing with perfect grammar and a broad vocabulary. Her observations about life in Boston are revealing in their insight. Silence seems to know everything going on in town. Her handwriting is impeccable and obviously feminine. At first she seems timid, slowly revealing determination. She thinks a great deal about sex.
Benjamin Franklin is relishing the situation.
And his brother is in awe.
The printer shows the Silence Dogood editorial to all his intellectual friends. No one has any idea who the author is. When the Courant publishes the piece on April 2, 1722, it is an immediate success.
So Benjamin Franklin writes another. When “Silence” admits to being a widow, eager suitors write the Courant proposing marriage. Popularity of the paper soars. Silence is published every two weeks, growing more explicit. She talks about waterfront prostitution, drunkenness, and public sex on the Boston Common.
After a number of columns, James Franklin finally figures out that the “Do Gooder” is indeed his brother. He doesn’t like it. So Silence Dogood is silenced for good as James confronts Ben, telling him the columns will stop immediately.
It’s a simple matter of jealousy.
After seven months and fourteen editions, Silence is being retired. But not before the state of Massachusetts charges James with contempt. He is arrested, jailed, and actually stands trial for the Courant’s provocative opinions. Ben then becomes publisher for a time. Ben takes the newspaper in an even more radical direction. But when James is acquitted of all charges in May 1723, their petty animosities return. Ben leaves the Courant to continue his apprenticeship elsewhere, only to be denied work at Boston’s other four print shops.
Employment is not Ben Franklin’s only problem: many now suspect that he is actually Silence Dogood. His strident writing for the Courant during James’s incarceration is the clue, particularly when it comes to religion. “My indiscreet disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people, as an infidel or atheist,” he will write in his autobiography.
Franklin decides to make a run for it.
On May 25, 1723, he books passage on a ship bound from Boston to New York. A friend convinces the ship’s captain that Franklin has gotten a young woman pregnant and that he must flee to avoid getting married. The captain makes room. Ben sells his library to pay for passage. The coincidence of his escape vessel bearing the same name as a Puritan ship a century before cannot be ignored. Franklin brings just a chest of clothes with him. This is the first time he has ever left Boston.
Yet as he flees his brother James, the seventeen-year-old has not escaped Cotton Mather, nor the legacy of his New England upbringing.*