they were not permitted to make their order hereditary.[1] But the Mathers came near establishing a dynasty. It was a Mather who cried out against the Benjamin Harris publication; it was a Mather who made it necessary to have printing done in New York when occasion arose for criticizing those stem New England divines, and it was unquestionably the spirit of the Mathers dominating in New England that led the community to stand, for sixteen long years, the dull and phlegmatic journalism of John Campbell.
James Franklin, who now appeared as printer of the new postmaster's newspaper, had studied his trade in London, whither he had been sent by his father, Josiah Franklin, whose paternity of thirteen children made it necessary for him to devote some thought to the occupations which they were to follow.
Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, is far from kindly toward his brother, and of his father he gives us not as much to indicate his importance as does the chronicler Sewall in several short lines. The Puritan Pepys, as Senator Lodge has called Sewall, shows what our modern yellow journalist would call a keen news sense when he records on February 6, 1703, that "Ebenezer Franklin of the South Church, a male infant of sixteen months old was drown'd in a tub of suds, February 5, 1703."[2] In 1708 Sewall preached at the house of Josiah Franklin "the eleventh sermon of the Barren Figtree."[3] He records going to a meeting at Franklin's house in 1713, when Benjamin was in his eighth year and probably had the privilege of sitting very still and listening to the wonderful elders. In 1718 Sewall, having
- ↑ M. C. Crawford, Old Boston in Colonial Days, 165.
- ↑ Sewall's Diary, ii, 73.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 236.
