Benjamin Franklin

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Benjamin Franklin, American statesman , printer, scientist , inventor, and writer, was born about three hundred years ago in Boston, Massachusetts. At the time of his birth, 1706, Massachusetts was still a colony and the United States had not yet become an independent nation. At that time candles were used for lights in houses and Franklin's father was a candlemaker. Benjamin was the tenth of seventeen children. When he. was only ten years old he had to leave school⁴to help his father.

Benjamin was not happy working in his father's candle shop, and so when he was thirteen his father sent him to Ben's elder brother where he became a printer. In these years he learned to write so well that he often wrote something for his brother's newspaper.

Franklin liked the work in the printing shop, but he did not get along very well with his brother⁵. At the age of seventeen⁶he set out to make his own way

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