Benjamin and Deborah Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Interred at Christ Church Burial Ground are hundreds of Colonial, Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary notables. The most famous of whom is Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin, the human multitude, was among other things, Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, printer, author, scientist, postmaster, inventor, and diplomat. At Franklin's death some 20,000 Philadelphians followed his cortege to his grave. His passing in 1790 symbolically severed the most important link to Colonial Philadelphia and the Revolutionary Era. The City of Brotherly Love would have to face a new century without its Renaissance man. William Smith, a long-time Franklin foe and Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, gave Franklin's eulogy in Christ Church, and the Comte de Mirabeau did the same before the French National Assembly in Paris.
Buried with Franklin is his wife Deborah. Much has been written about their relationship. To get some notion of how he perceived her, he once sent her an English beer jug with this message: "I fell in love with it at first sight for I thought it look'd like a fat jolly Dame, clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white calico gown on, good natur'd and lovely, and put me in mind of — Somebody." That Somebody was her!
Nearby is a tiny marker for Francis Franklin who died of small pox at age four. After "Frankie's" death, his grieving father urged Philadelphians to inoculate their children against this dread disease.
Next to Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, are their daughter and son-in-law, Sarah ("Sally") Franklin and Richard Bache. The Baches lived with Benjamin Franklin in a house that stood where Franklin Court is today. Bache published the virulently anti-Washington newspaper The Aurora. Franklin's other son, William, is not buried here. During the Revolution he was a Loyalist. Benjamin Franklin wrote that nothing in his life had ever hurt him so much as the defection of his son.
Benjamin and Deborah Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Interred at Christ Church Burial Ground are hundreds of Colonial, Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary notables. The most famous of whom is Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin, the human multitude, was among other things, Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, printer, author, scientist, postmaster, inventor, and diplomat. At Franklin's death some 20,000 Philadelphians followed his cortege to his grave. His passing in 1790 symbolically severed the most important link to Colonial Philadelphia and the Revolutionary Era. The City of Brotherly Love would have to face a new century without its Renaissance man. William Smith, a long-time Franklin foe and Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, gave Franklin's eulogy in Christ Church, and the Comte de Mirabeau did the same before the French National Assembly in Paris.
Buried with Franklin is his wife Deborah. Much has been written about their relationship. To get some notion of how he perceived her, he once sent her an English beer jug with this message: "I fell in love with it at first sight for I thought it look'd like a fat jolly Dame, clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white calico gown on, good natur'd and lovely, and put me in mind of — Somebody." That Somebody was her!
Nearby is a tiny marker for Francis Franklin who died of small pox at age four. After "Frankie's" death, his grieving father urged Philadelphians to inoculate their children against this dread disease.
Next to Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, are their daughter and son-in-law, Sarah ("Sally") Franklin and Richard Bache. The Baches lived with Benjamin Franklin in a house that stood where Franklin Court is today. Bache published the virulently anti-Washington newspaper The Aurora. Franklin's other son, William, is not buried here. During the Revolution he was a Loyalist. Benjamin Franklin wrote that nothing in his life had ever hurt him so much as the defection of his son.