Josiah Franklin was an English-born businessman best known as the father of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

.
Josiah was born in the tiny town of Ecton

Ecton

Ecton is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, England. The village is just east of Northampton, just off the A4500 road. It was one of the first villages in Northamptonshire to be given conservation status...

, Northamptonshire, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 on December 23, 1657. Josiah was the ninth and the last child of his parents, Thomas Franklin, blacksmith and farmer, and his wife Jane White Franklin. Thomas Franklin remarried and had other children. Josiah Franklin was an industrious young man who worked as a fabric dyer in Ecton. In Boston he was a member of Old South Church where he served as a tithingman, a prominent and highly respected member of the congregation.

Anne Child

He emigrated to the American colonies in 1682. He married twice and had 17 children, ten boys and seven girls. In 1677 Josiah Franklin had married his first wife, Anne Child, in Ecton, England. Over the next few years, the couple had three children: Elizabeth, Samuel, and Hannah. Upon moving to Boston, he took up the trade of tallow chandler and soap boiler because the trade he was born to was not in demand in New England. After the family moved to Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, the couple had four more children, including Josiah Jr., Ann, Joseph (I), and Joseph (II). The first Joseph died soon after birth, and the next child was named for him. In 1689 Anne Child Franklin died of complications while giving birth to her seventh child in Boston.

Abiah Folger

In November 1689, Josiah Franklin married his second wife, Abiah Folger, in the Old South Church. Abiah of Nantucket, Massachusetts, was the daughter of Peter

Peter Foulger

Peter Foulger was an interpreter of the American Indian language for the first settlers of Nantucket. He was the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin....

 and Mary Morril Folger. Peter Folger was a schoolmaster and a miller. Abiah went on to bear Josiah ten more children: John (1690), Peter (1692), Mary (1694), James

James Franklin (printer)

James Franklin was an American colonial author, printer, newspaper publisher, and almanac publisher...

 (1697), Sarah (1699), Ebenezer (1701), Thomas (1703), Benjamin

Benjamin

Benjamin was the last-born of Jacob's twelve sons, and the second and last son of Rachel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin. In the Biblical account, unlike Rachel's first son, Joseph, Benjamin was born in Canaan. He died in Egypt on...

 (1706), Lydia (1708), and Jane (1712).

Benjamin Franklin

Josiah insisted that each of his sons must learn a trade. He had great dreams of Benjamin becoming a minister, but Josiah could only afford to send his son to school for two years. As young Benjamin loved to read, he apprenticed him to his brother James, who was a printer. Later, Benjamin Franklin borrowed books from his friends and taught himself arithmetic

Arithmetic

Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers...

, grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

. Benjamin had a very strong relationship with his father, who had a great influence on Benjamin.

Benjamin Franklin was born January 17th 1706, and died at the age of 84, April 17th 1790.