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Neither family approved of the match, but when William went to London to study law about 1759, he left with the understanding that Elizabeth would wait for him. Thomas Graeme and step-granddaughter of Pennsylvania's 14th Governor, Sir William Keith. Although often depicted as a young child when he assisted his father in the famed kite experiment of 1752, Franklin was at least 21 years old at the time.Īs a young man, William became engaged to Elizabeth Graeme, daughter of prominent Philadelphia physician Dr. As he grew older, he accompanied his father on several missions, including trips to England. There is some speculation that Deborah Read was Franklin's biological mother, and that because of his parents' common-law relationship, the circumstances of his birth were obscured so as not to be politically harmful to him or to their marital arrangement.įranklin joined a company of Pennsylvania provincial troops in 1746 and spent a winter in Albany in King George's War, obtaining the rank of captain in 1747.
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William was raised by his father and Deborah Read, his father's common-law wife she had been abandoned by her legal husband but not divorced. In 1750, Benjamin Franklin told his mother that William was nineteen years old, but this may have been an attempt to make the youth appear legitimate. Confusion exists about Franklin's birth and parentage because Benjamin Franklin was secretive about his son's origins. He was the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, a leading figure in the city. William Franklin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then a colony in British America.