A timeline, to collect and share things from the many generations of Thomas Franklin' life.
Created by fb_501228217 on Nov 10, 2010
Last updated: 03/06/11 at 08:28 AM
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Thomas "David" Franklin
Live Birth (11/18/1957 -
Currently Living in Clarksburg, West Virginia
http://www.Facebook.com/ThomasDavidFranklin
Thomas Dudley Franklin III "Tom" born (11/10/1937 - ?) married Jean Lucille (Leary) they had 5 children, 2 sons and three daughters. Thomas David Franklin (11/18/1957 - Deborah Jean Franklin (12/15/1958 - Randall Louis Franklin ( 06/21/ Ruth Marie Franklin( Betty Mae Franklin ( 05/05/65 -
Thomas "Dudley" Franklin II SSN: 213-07-7636 Born: 24 Jul 1910 Died: March 1985 Last Residence: 21205 Baltimore, Baltimore City, Maryland, United States of America Died: Mar 1985 State (year) Mayland (Before 1951) SSN Issued Request SS-5 1930 Census "Pop" Father to Thomas Dudley Franklin III Lou Franklin
approxiatematley this time fram lived in baltimore MD and was a Silver Smith for Kirk Silver in Baltimore, an old city directory lists him as working there later company changed their name to Kirk-Steiff Silversmiths. He made the ring for Pop from DAD to DUD inscribed inside with the date.
01/17/1706 to 04/17/1790
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Thomas Franklin's Entry in the Ecton Tithes Book now in the collection of:
Massachusetts Historical Society
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02215
http://www.ectonvillage.co.uk/
Josiah (1655-1744) Benjamin Franklins Father, Josiah, who was commonly called Josias, sailed to America in 1683. It would be easy to assume Josiass motives for doing so were religious (the Franklin family were strong Protestants and were perhaps uncomfortable with the easy morality and high church leanings of Restoration England) but it is more likely that economics was the prime reason. Josias Franklin had barely been keeping his head above water in England and probably hoped to do better elsewhere. He had been working with his brother John as a wool-dyer in Banbury but after arriving in New England with his wife and three children he became a tallow chandler and soap maker - a small but significant step down the economic-social hierarchy but a start in the New World. Josiass first wife, and the mother of seven children, died within a few years of their arrival in America and he then married Abiah Folger, a second generation New Englander. There were another ten children by this marriage, the youngest, born in Boston in 1706, being christened Benjamin after his Uncle Benjamin for whom Josias had a strong affection. Uncle Benjamin, like two of his brothers was a dyer, and came to the house in Boston and lived with them for several years while Franklin was a boy.
1646 - Tithes and the Village of Ecton
The previous year King Charles 1st was defeated at the Battle of Naseby (not many miles from Ecton) by Oliver Cromwell and his Ironside Troops. Charles headed north in the hope of forming a new army in Scotland but he was captured and by 1647 he was being held prisoner at Holdenby House, (again not far from Ecton) for several months before going to London.
At the same time on the opposite side of the political spectrum were bands of Levellers wandering around the countryside causing unrest amongst ordinary people. The Levellers were soldiers who fought on the side of Cromwell and who wanted more political rights for ordinary people. In 1649 William Thompson one such Levellers was shot by pursuing Parliamentary troops in Wellingborough Woods, he then went on to Northampton, occupying the town in May of that year. He was killed and subsequently buried in an unmarked grave in All Saints Churchyard.
With Parliament in control instead of the King the church became more puritanical; the common prayer book was banned as was the celebrating of Christmas and Easter. One of the few pleasures ordinary people could participate in was also banned, when all the Maypoles were taken
down. At the same time the harvests of the 1640’s were the worst of the century caused by wet weather, this resulted in higher food prices.Parliament was short of funds due to the cost of the Civil War so excise duty was placed on beer (the staple drink at the time as the water was impure and not fit for drinking) and on salt which was necessary in preserving food, so paying tithes would have been very hard for the people.
What exactley was a Tithe? There were two kinds of tithes, the greater and the lesser tithes. Each household had to give one tenth or tithe of their goods to the church. The Rector received the great tithes (one cow in every ten, or one bundle of corn in every ten). The lesser tithes
went to the village priest who saw to the everyday running of the parish. The rector was a well educated man having been to either Oxford or Cambridge universities, but the parish priest had only the minimum education, his share of the tithes was made up of hens, ducks or garden produce.
In 1646 people paid their tithes in kind but later in the century it gradually changed to people giving one tenth of their wealth in money, so it would be the value of the cow rather than the actual cow. We have no record of who the priest may be who received the small tithes but we do know a little about the rector who received the great tithes.
In 1646 the first John Palmer was the Rector of Ecton. He was the eldest son of Joseph Palmer, Gentleman of Cropedy in Oxfordshire and his first wife Ann. Ann’s father was John Dod, the ‘Decalogist’ at one time of Canons Ashby. A Decalogist is someone who has connections with the Ten Commandments. John was born in 1612 and after attending Emmanual College Cambridge was incorporated at Oxford on the 6th November 1651. He was Rector of Ecton from !8th November until his death in 1679. As well as being Rector of Ecton from 1665 he was also Archdeacon of Northampton and is buried in Ecton.
John Palmers wife was Bridget Catesby, eldest daughter of the Lord of the Manor of Ecton, Clifton Catesby. She was born in 1626 and died a year after her husband. The couple had 3 sons and 5 daughters, the two oldest sons followed their father and in due time became Rectors of Ecton. The third son is buried in St. Giles in Northampton. The third daughter married Nathaniel Whalley, Rector of Broughton, whilst the fourth daughter married Samual Freeman, Dean of Peterborough.
Looking at the will of John Palmer you will see that he was a wealthy man, he gave his Manor of Deanshanger to his eldest son John, and to his second son Thomas
he left lands in Hollowell and Guilsborough. He also left lands to his third son George plus £20 each to numerous relatives. ‘To the Church of Ecton’ for the service of the Lord’s table one round plate of pattin of silver which I have already provided. For the poor of Ecton 40 shillings. Bridget Palmer his wife left a substantial amount of money
in her will, £100 to each of her children and various gifts of £20 to her grandchildren. To her brother Thomas Catesby of Ecton she bequeathed two of ‘my Jacobus peeces as an acknoledgement of my thankfulness to him for all his favors at all times’ (a Jacobus is an English gold coin struck in the reign of James 1st and worth about 20 - 24 shillings). To the poor of Ecton she left 50 shillings.
John Palmer was a witness to the wills of several people in Ecton, most people were so poor they did not make a will so the following must have been the more wealthy of the parish.
T Welford 1648
W. Fox 1663
Eliz. Marshal 1664
Alice Thompson 1668
E. Peacock 1670
J. Mot 1673
Fr. Child 1675
Joseph Wells 1676
J. Smith 1677
In 1679 Eliz. Maydwell of Northampton gave John Palmer and his wife 20 shillings for rings.
1646 was a time of great upheaval in England and one wonders how much these changes affected the people of Ecton living through those momentous times.
Betty Shearing, April 2007
Looking at the February Village magazine made me look a little closer at that era and what turbulent times it was for the people of Ecton and the country as a whole.
http://www.ectonvillage.co.uk/parishMagazine/april07/tithes.pdf
Thomas (1638-1702
An American Visitor - 1758
It is late on a sunny evening in July 1758. Three men cast long shadows as they walk through the village into the churchyard in Ecton. They have called first at a decayed old stone building still known by their family name. The father, grandfather and great-grandfather of one of the men had all been born in the village and it was a niece who had showed them to the churchyard. They pause to look at the church registers before exploring the churchyard, near the north porch. Soon one of the men, a servant called Peter, will wash the moss and lichen from two of the gravestones while a younger man, William will take down the inscriptions. The third man, a portly figure in his 50s, the father of William, will watch anxiously. He has come a long way for this moment.
Slowly the moss is cleared from one of the gravestones and reveals:
Here lyeth the body of Thomas Franklin who departed this life January the 6 Anno Domini 1702 in the sixty fifth yeare of his age
John, Benjamin and Josias were trained as dyers. Thomas, the eldest of the four brothers, Franklins third uncle, and the stories of whom most attracted Franklins attention, was born in 1638.
Young Thomas was always intended to work in the familys smithy business in Ecton, following the established pattern for all eldest sons. But Thomas was a bright child, mainly self-taught and Benjamin Franklin describes his Uncle Thomas in his autobiography as bred a smith under his father; but being ingenious and encouraged in learning (as all my brothers were) by an esquire Palmer; then the principal inhabitant of that parish, he qualified himself for the bar, and became a considerable man in the county; as chief mover of all public spirited enterprises for the county or town of Northampton, as well as of his own village, of which many instances were related of him; and he as much taken notice of and patronised by Lord Halifax (2) As a consequence, he had little time for smithying.
Thomas had a keen interest in music. He had built himself an organ to play at home, and connected the bells to the church clock mechanism (St Marys Magdalene, Ecton not having a clock), so that they chimed automatically four times a day at four-hour intervals. He was a one time a clerk to the Commissioner of Taxes, and at another the village schoolteacher. His casting and smithying skills were not entirely forgotten or neglected, since with his partner Henry Bagley, who had moved to Manor Farm, Ecton in 1680, he cast many bells (most notably those for Lichfield Cathedral). Any spare time was probably absorbed by the responsibilities that go with being a churchwarden (and his pages of accounts can still be seen in the parish records).
Uncle Thomas died in 1702, and his wife, Eleanor, in 1711. Their only child, a daughter, Mary had married a Richard Fisher of Wellingborough in about 1708. The house, with their other land in Ecton(through the success of Marys father, Thomas, and his Uncle Nicholas, the Franklin family had come to own considerable areas of land around the village) was left to Mary on Thomass death and sold in 1719 to Mr Thomas Isted, who had bought Ecton Hall in 1712 and who had plans to develop his estate.
Thomas and Eleanor are buried in the churchyard in Ecton and it was these graves, in particular, that Benjamin Franklin and his son had come to find in July 1758. The niece that had acted as a guide to Franklin may have been the daughter, or grand-daughter of Mary.
http://www.ectonTithes0.html/
Benjamin Franklin's grandparents were Thomas, who was born in 1598, and Mary Franklin. Thomas and Mary had four sons, Thomas (1638-1702), John, Benjamin and the youngest, Josiah (1655-1744). Grandfather Thomas, and presumably his family, had lived in Ecton all his life until he was too old to carry on the business, when he went to live with his son
The Franklins of Ecton, Northamptonshire, England.
The Franklin family had lived on a freehold of about thirty acres since at least 1555 (the earliest date in the parish registers). The famous American Statesman Benjamin Franklin's grandparents were Thomas, who was born in 1598.
Thomas and Mary had four sons,
Thomas (1638-1702),
John,
Benjamin
and the youngest, Josiah (1655-1744).
Grandfather Thomas, and presumably his family, had lived in Ecton all his life until he was too old to carry on the business, when he went to live with his son, John, a dyer in Banbury, the older brother with whom Franklins father, Josiah had served his apprenticeship.
Thomas Franklin died and is buried in Banbury.
Ecton Village
Ecton is a small village and parish halfway between Northampton and Wellingborough. It was one of the first villages in Northamptonshire to be given conservation status, but there is a lot more to it than its appearance. This website chronicles its feudal past, its personalities - Benjamin Franklin and William Hogarth were visitors.
http://www.ectonvillage.co.uk/
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