The following was written by Michael W. Smith:
https://michaelwsmith.com/the-sacrifices-made-by-the-declaration-signers/
"What happened to the signers of the Declaration of Independence?
This is the Price They Paid
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the revolutionary war.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. There is ALWAYS such a "plausible story" to cover the implications when something like this pops up. For Pizzagate, for example, they "debunked" it by saying "there was no basement" at Comet Pizza, completely ignoring the fact that James Alifantis actually posted about the basement at Comet Pizza on Twitter. But of course no one checks those things, so the plausible story becomes the "official truth". It helps that the plausible story always aligns with what people want to believe.
As I said, the evidence of this particular event wasn't sufficient, but that was not what I base my assessment of Franklin on, rather it is a ton of other stuff that he did that advanced the agenda of the Cabal. If you think the "matter is solved" however, you have much to learn about the complicity of the media.
Unless you understand the monopoly of the media, you can't appreciate the fuckery that lay therein. The Londonist, where the article was published, is very much a main stream site, which means 100% owned by the Cabal. The author, Zoe Craig has been an editor for many other main stream sites, including the BBC. This makes her a very possible MI6 agent. Not necessarily of course, and I'm certainly not trying to make an argument for that with such little evidence, but once you understand the complicity of the media, and how many "editors" especially are in fact agents of Intelligence, you can appreciate that everything is suspect. I am only trying to suggest your conclusion is far from certain, I am not saying "FB was a child murderer." But he most certainly might have been, and this is evidence that supports that conclusion.
As for the rest of your thing, I have no idea what you are trying to say. Everything I said stands. His father held a position of power and authority. He came from wealth, his schooling, such as it was, cost money most did not have. Did he come from "great wealth?" No, I never said he did. But the average person in America made a few cents an hour in the 1700s (in the early 1800s it was ~0.05c per hour, I'm not sure about the century before). Secondary or Tertiary school cost $600 per year according to the previous source (secondary school was actually more expensive, but easier to get into if you had the money). Assuming a 60 hour work week, and that it was the same in the 1700s as the early 1800s, the average yearly wage was $150 per year. You would have needed to make about 10 times the average to have such “disposable” money to send your child to high school or college, and that’s just for one kid. Josiah Franklin had a plethora of rugrats, and he still had the money to pay for a private teacher for BF.
This discrepancy between average income and the cost of paying a college (or at least high school) educated person to teach your child, teachers who were themselves used to a reasonable level of wealth, is why only a couple percent of children in the 1700s had ANY formal schooling at all, and less than 1% had "private teachers."
Again, the problem people have is that they associate these things with TODAYs standards. For example, they see “minister” and think of someone “doing God’s work.” Yet being a minister at that time was ALWAYS a position of power. The ministers were ALWAYS wealthy. Even just being a leading member of the Church (such as Josiah Franklin) was ALWAYS a position of power in the community. In this case being a tithesman was more than just a "ruler of ten men" since that is a completely different context. It was a leader of the legal and administrative system. I'm not sure exactly what that means, perhaps a judge and/or accountant? Treasurer and Secretary?
As an example of important context of the times, both of those positions (treasurer and secretary) were positions of great power in the community. Indeed, “secretary” was sometimes more powerful of a position than “president” in some corporations and/or organizations. Things like “superintendent” meant the highest position one can have in some settings, and yet, such words such as secretary, superintendent, or treasurer mean very little today. Context is everything. You have to understand the times to understand the power associated with the positions being named.
As for "his business was a "tallow chandler/soap boiler" that is meaningless. Rockefeller dug sludge out of the ground and was the richest man on the planet (not really, but people thought he was). Elias Dodge made shoes, but had hundreds of employees and made more women's shoes than anyone else in the world. Success is not about the business, but about the scale of the business. Without knowing say, how many employees he had, or how many shops he had, how much he exported, etc., there is no way to even begin to judge the measure of his wealth.
At the least he was a community leader, which is NOT an "average" father, which puts a direct lie to the idea that "Franklin was a self-made man." By all accounts Franklin did take advantage of the opportunities that were available to him. In that sense he was "self-made" as in, he could have failed in his endeavors, and he did not. The point I am making is, he had FAR MORE opportunities than the vast majority of the people on the planet, or in America, or in New England. The idea that BF came from "humble beginnings" is complete and total bullshit by all available evidence if you understand the context of the time period.
All these things are possible, but Josiah Franklin was not a community leader. He was a Tithingman of New England where the title meant something very different from the old english meaning. It specifically states that he was a guy that was elected to walk around church with a rod with a knob on the end which he would use to wake people up during sermons. He was not a constable.
As for apprenticeships, I had understood that there was some difficulty with the concept, but had not studied it in depth. Here is a good article.
https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/apprenti.html
Apprenticeships were not typically of the wealthy elite. They were more for people with some means, but not the rich. Universities and colleges were primarily for religious studies.
By your assessment of the time period, every single business owner and every owner with land was the 1%. I don't think that is accurate. The system in the Americas was not Peasant and Feudal ruler. We didn't have that setup here. Many people were not wealthy, but the reasons people came here was to make opportunities that were not available in the old world. Overall the colonies were considered to be a backwater colony by Britain, however there was substantial opportunity to be had for those with intelligence, talent, hard work or opportunity. The super wealthy elite did not come to the colonies to live, it was unfashionable. People lived here to make a new life and hopefully find their fortunes. Most of the people that moved here did so for the opportunity. Some were from old wealthy families that were no longer wealthy, but mostly were regular people that had a skill or created their own opportunities when they got here. In summation, the colonies were not some grandiose resort for the wealthy elite. The place was dirty, unrefined, filled with illness and danger. Indian attacks were still occurring and people that lived in the border villages and towns still had raids. The French Indian war was in the 1750's and lasted over a decade.
There is nothing that I can find that says anything like this about Josiah Franklin. Here is what I found:
Josiah Franklin was literally the thought police. He “won a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice,” which means he had a position to pass out judgment, just like a constable. This means he was a community leader, as I said. Just because it was part of the Church, doesn’t mean it wasn’t also part of the town’s leadership structure, on the contrary, at the time it was very common to be both. The Church WAS the government at the time in New England.
You are conflating "have to work" with "not a wealthy elite", just like everyone else. This is a mistake everyone makes because we are trained to make it. It makes for "interesting history." Just because someone is working class (those who have to work to eat) doesn't mean they aren't wealthy or elite. John D. Rockefeller was born into an aristocratic family. His family had power and money going back forever, but he was STILL working class (in the beginning). He was working class because if he didn't work, he would have become a vagrant. His father had plenty of money, but he wouldn't have supported him.
The Aristocracy isn't just an Aristocracy, it is also a Meritocracy. That is what most people don't get. Their success is not guaranteed by their birth, on the contrary, they have to work for it. They just have opportunities the non-aristocrats don't have.
For example, Rockefeller’s father started him off with a loan of a thousand dollars. That was a huge sum of money at the time, but he couldn’t just go and retire with it. He had to invest it and work that investment, so he did. He also had received a secondary school education. Again, something the vast majority did not have. This provided him with more opportunities. Rockefeller is another person who was, according to history, a “self-made man.” This is true, to the extent that he didn’t inherent millions, and mansions, and an oil company already pre-made. It is false in that he was handed more opportunities than 99% of the rest of the planet. A similar situation exists for Ben Franklin, according to the evidence.
Getting a printing apprenticeship was not something that most people would have been given. You had to come from a solid family to get any apprenticeship at all.
For reference, see page 51 in this book on the history of the Prussian school system, which was the precursor to our school system.
You had to come from a “family” to get an apprenticeship. That doesn’t mean that all these families were wealthy, but they were at least middle tier. Those below that (we’ll call it the bottom 30%) had no opportunities at all. But some apprenticeships were harder to get than others because they required more education to even begin. To get a printing apprenticeship you had to be able to read very well, which means education. You had to be able to read Latin as well, which Ben knew because he attended Boston Latin School, an education that most did not receive. You also had to be connected. A printing apprenticeship is particularly difficult to get because "printing" meant "The Media." They were the newspapers of the time. They were the propaganda agencies of the time. My investigation always leads to the people who own the printing presses having all the signs of being Cabal, every single time. Deep dives into everyone who is a "printer" or "almanac maker", etc. has all the other ties into "the system." I'm not making that case here, because it is too large of an endeavor, but that is where my investigation always leads, back to those who run the printing presses. "Printing apprenticeship" was a HUGE deal. I have run into many other notables who began that way.
Meh, sorta. It was for law, religion, science, etc. But religion was a part of the Aristocracy. Religion ruled the world at the time, thus it was tied into all study, which was only afforded by the elite. Also, why do you mention that as if it is relevant to your case? Ben Franklin didn't get a tertiary education, and I never said he did, though his Wikipedia page says his father wanted him to become a minister, which means his father thought he could have, which means the opportunity must have been there for him, if he had chosen to take it, an opportunity that almost no one else had.
That’s not exactly what I’ve said. I have explicitly stated I am making the case for him being more like top 10%. Perhaps higher than that, since his father was a community leader, and without his printing apprenticeship, he probably wouldn’t have become anything at all.
The top 10% have opportunities most do not have. Rockefeller was not, according to my research, a “1%’er.” He was however a 10%’er. Ben Franklin has all the same signs of opportunity. The stories of his “self-made”ness leave out a great deal of context to understand what life was like for everyone else.
Again, context is key. Most people who were in America were not business owners. On the contrary, most were Indentured servants:
Most immigrants were indentures, most people were immigrants. This source says 20% were slaves (in 1750, I'm not sure about 1720ish, the time of Ben's apprenticeship). Most of the rest were wage laborers. How many does that leave for business owners? Not a lot. Most people were NOT business owners. Most people were NOT land owners. Most people were slaves, indentured servants, or those who had ended their indenture and were working for someone else who owned a business. Of those business owners, how many were also Church leaders? Probably several, but not all of them. Thus being both a business owner and a Church leader with community authority was something only a small percentage of the population had.
I can find no evidence that Josiah Franklin came over here on an indenture, which means he had the money to pay for his faire, something that only the top 30-50% could afford. I did find this on Ben’s grandmother:
Ben’s grandfather, the one who almost certainly went to college, had enough to pay for his own faire, and had enough cash in his pocket to pay off his soon to be wife’s indenture (worth 3 to 7 years of wages depending on the indenture), basically buying her. Once again, indications of wealth.
These statements are true to an extent, but also missing a ton of important context. The "seventh sons" came because they were born rich, and wanted to stay that way. Most came to New England, at that time, like Josiah Franklin, to escape “religious persecution.” The religious upheaval that was occurring in England at the time was almost certainly a part of the Cabal’s plan, but I am not making that case at this time, nor am I going to make the case for Josiah Franklin having been Cabal, even though there are telltale signs. Josiah Franklin was specifically a Nonconformist. An illegal thing to be, thus he came to America where he became a Church and community leader.
This is not true. To get a charter to come to America you had to have money. If you came over on Indenture, it’s possible you never got out of it, or were a wage laborer for most of your life. If you did get out of it and made something of yourself (made a business for example), it was, according to my research, always because you had a family name. In addition, there were a TON of European Aristocrats that came here. For example, the Roosevelts came from the van Rosenvelt family, Lords of Holland, and owners of the Dutch East India Trading Company. Many such families came to America and set up shop. The number of “seventh sons” of the Aristocrats that came here is numerous. THESE were the people who were coming to the land of opportunity on their own dime; the sons of rich men that wouldn’t have made it in Europe because they had too many older brothers. Yes, it was the “land of opportunity,” but not all of the opportunities were the same for everyone who came over. That part of the story of "the land of opportunity" is a complete fabrication of reality.
As you read through the lives of the people who are the movers and shakers, you find a common thread. They always have parents who had wealth. Even when it says they were “self-made,” their parentage is always spot on, coming from community leaders (Ben’s father), highly educated people (his maternal grandfather), or well off land owners (both sides of his family), and having at least some level of formal education. The “self-made” people may not come from the 1%, but they almost invariably come from the top 10%. Which was my original premise. The only way to say that these people pulled themselves up from their bootstraps, is to ignore the other 90% of the population who never had the bootstraps handed to them to begin with.