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How Did Benjamin Franklin Shape Early America

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Benjamin Franklin is a figure that comes to mind whenever you mention the early beginnings of America, not only for his political involvement, but more so in my opinion, for his inventive ingenuity. It's my belief that many of the ideas and inventions not only helped shape early America but also continued to shape the country long after his death. We'll learn of his most prominent ideas as well as some of his lesser known creations that have found there way into nearly every city in the country. Benjamin Franklin was born to Josiah Franklin and his second wife Abiah Folger on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. At the time Boston was still a British Colony. Benjamin's father had originally planned on Benjamin being a tithe to the church1 as a preacher, having him sent to grammar school at the age of 8. Foreseeing the inability to pay for Ben's higher education after …show more content…
He was a founder of a group of men who would share their ideas with debates, their writing, and at one point their books. This group was called the JUNTO2, and was like a book club, debate club, and writers club balled into one. My understanding is that after a few attempts at loaning books to each other they made a subscription based access to these books to the public. This subscription had a base fee and then an annual payment that renewed for fifty years per the contract.3 This was first started in Philadelphia having a small base. The way in which this helped develop early America is that it gave the common people access to intellectual material normally only available to higher class individuals. This material gave the common public the ability to expand and grow there minds. Many foreigners of the same class had been noted as saying the people seemed to be much smarter. This library was soon to be adopted among the developing colonies and bringing knowledge easier to the masses of early

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