William Franklin was Benjamin’s first child and his only son to survive into adulthood. His exact birthday is unknown, as is the identity of his mother, but he was born sometime around 1730, and Benjamin and Deborah Franklin raised him together in their Philadelphia home. Benjamin, who by the time of William’s early childhood was a man of means and stature in Philadelphia, made a point to avail his son of the education and opportunities for advancement he had not had in his Boston youth.
Benjamin and William were a remarkably close pair. A friend reported that Benjamin was more than William’s father, he was also “his friend, his brother, his intimate, and easy companion.” William assisted in the kite experiment, making him the only person to witness his father’s successful demonstration that lightning is electricity. In the 1750s, the two of them traveled to London, where William practiced law and together the Franklins promoted their family’s interests within the British Empire. Father and son attended the coronation of King George III in 1762, and the following year, William, though only in his early thirties, was appointed Royal Governor of New Jersey.
Like his father, William had his own son out of wedlock, William Temple Franklin. Unlike Benjamin, William did not raise Temple. Unaware of his paternity, Temple grew up with a foster family in England. Benjamin eventually brought him back to America and introduced him to his father and his stepmother, William’s wife Elizabeth, who accepted Temple with open arms.
As Britain and the Thirteen Colonies split apart, so did William and Benjamin Franklin. While his father was in London representing several colonies before the King and Parliament, William was the King’s man in New Jersey, and they began to view the growing crisis from opposing perspectives. When war came, William remained a Loyalist, and his father became one of the most ardent Revolutionaries. While Benjamin was working in the Continental Congress to produce the Declaration of Independence, William was arrested by rebel soldiers and held as a political prisoner. He would spend years in jail, including eight months in solitary confinement. William’s sister Sally appealed for leniency on his behalf, but his father did not lift a finger to help him. While William was imprisoned, his wife, Elizabeth grew dangerously sick. William pleaded with his captors for the opportunity to visit her in her illness, but was denied parole. She died without seeing her husband in 1778. William was released from captivity later that year and went to British-occupied New York City, where he coordinated Loyalist raids against the United States in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.
After the war, William settled in England. He saw his father once more, at Southampton, but Benjamin was not interested in a reconciliation. He treated the meeting as a business engagement and had William turn over his North American properties to his son, Temple. William died in 1813 and was buried in the graveyard at London’s St Pancras Church. When the grounds were later renovated, his body was moved and his grave lost.
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