Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 6, 1706. Franklin's father put him in grammar school to become a minister, but soon took him out again because he could not afford it. Franklin spent a year at a different school and then became an apprentice in the printing shop of his older half-brother, James. There he learned the trade and anonymously published series of essays in his brother's paper.
In 1730, Franklin won a contract from the government for official printing work. With this income he was secure, and he soon bought a failing newspaper from his former boss. He married Deborah Read, the daughter of the couple he had lived with when he first arrived in Philadelphia. Together they raised Franklin's illegitimate son, William, and had two children of their own.
During the 1730s, Franklin was active in civic projects, founding the first public library and the first fire company in America. He also began publishing his popular Poor Richard's Almanack, full of wise and funny sayings. In the 1740s, Franklin grew interested in science, especially the study of electricity. He conducted a series of experiments and discovered that lightning is electrical. His discoveries made him famous in Europe as well as America.
In 1748, Franklin retired from the printing business and devoted himself fulltime to science and civic leadership, founding a hospital and a volunteer militia. In 1751, he was elected to the Pennsylvania assembly, where he quickly rose to power. When war with the French and Indians threatened in the mid-1750s, Franklin attended a meeting of colonial governments in Albany, where he drafted the Albany Plan of Union. He became more deeply involved in Pennsylvania politics, when he tried to convince the British government to let the assembly tax Pennsylvania's proprietors.
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