Here is a man like no other who had four successful careers as businessman, inventor, civic founder, and statesman. We will see six of the institutions he founded on this tour as well as his home property. We’ll also hear several stories from his life and the life of his family.
Let’s take this tour together and learn about Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia!
2 hours. This is an outdoor walking tour; distance will be about 18 city blocks.
6th & Market Streets, at the Independence Visitor Center, Market Street (south) entrance.
We will pass by the street where Benjamin Franklin, alone at the age of 17, deboarded a boat on the Delaware, walked along munching bread, saw a girl in a doorway giggling at him, and later married her.
We will discuss Franklin’s founding of seven Philadelphia institutions: the Fire Company and the Fire Insurance Company; The Library and the Philosophical (Scientific) Society; the Militia and associated Fort; the Academy and College, and the hospital. We will see several of the buildings that still stand.
We’ll also pass by a replica of Franklin’s printshop where he created Poor Richard’s Almanac and colonial money. We will look into Franklin’s many inventions: the improved stove, the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the glass armonica, a musical instrument.
We will review Franklin’s amazing diplomatic career in England and France, as well as his role in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitutional Convention, and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. We will see Franklin’s famous family gravesite, and the epitaph he wrote for himself as a young man.
Along the way, we will also review the many stories of his family’s life—his illegitimate son who became governor of the New Jersey colony; his son who died young of smallpox; his daughter who became a great Patriot; and his daughter’s son who became a printer—and a thorn in the side of Washington.
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