We think of America’s War for Independence as a revolution, yet it was every bit as much a civil war as the conflict that bears that name of nearly a hundred years after. As hostilities between England and her American colonies deepened, many ordinary people were compelled by circumstances to choose sides—choices that could cost one not only their fortunes, but their very lives. Families were bitterly divided over such decisions. Perhaps the best-known example of such familial strife is that which came between the famed Benjamin Franklin and his son, William. William Franklin’s mother is unknown, but his stepmother, Debora, took him in and raised him as her own. It is a young William often depicted by the elder Franklin’s side in illustrations of his legendary kite experiment. Thanks to his father’s influence, William Franklin was appointed Royal Governor of New Jersey in 1763. As the king’s representative in the colony, he would remain a staunch loyalist. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin visited his son at his mansion in Perth Amboy and for three days, the two men debated and argued, each trying to bring the other over to their side. When it was over, neither had prevailed and their relationship was never the same. Indeed, the only saw one another briefly on more time, in 1785 when the elder Franklin was traveling through England. They discussed some outstanding business, but their relationship beyond saving. There was, however, another less well-known price William Franklin would pay for his loyalty. The Provincial Congress had ordered him placed under house arrest in January of 1776, with the stipulation he could not conduct any government business. When he defiantly attempted to convene the Assembly as usual, he was formally arrested that June and imprisoned for two years and five months in Connecticut, spending 250 days in solitary confinement for secretly attempting to still support the Loyalist cause. His wife, Elizabeth, was permitted to remain in their house, fleeing to British-occupied Manhattan when the British Army briefly controlled Perth Amboy in late 1777, early 1778. She had moved all their belongings into a New York City warehouse, but all was destroyed by fire. Elizabeth Franklin died in New York at age 49, her husband having been refused permission to attend her funeral. William Franklin’s decisions had cost him his liberty, his relationship with his father, his home, and then his wife. Yet he remained dedicated to his cause. Freed in a prisoner exchange in 1778, he remained a leader in the Loyalist community in New York before becoming exiled to England in 1782. He later sat down and designed a memorial plaque to his late wife, who was buried across the Atlantic in New York’s St. Paul’s Chapel. Installed there in 1787, it read: “Beneath the altar of this Church are deposited the remains of Mrs. Elizabeth Franklin, Wife of his Excellency, William Franklin, Esq. late Governor under his Brittanick [sic] Majesty of the Province of New Jersey, Compelled by the adverse circumstances of the time to Part from the Husband she loved and at length deprived of the soothing hope of his speedy return she sunk under accumulated distresses and departed this life on the 28th day of July 1778 in the 49th year of her age. Sincerity and Sensibility, Politeness and Affability, Goodness and Charity, With sense refined and person elegant in her united. From a grateful remembrance of her affectionate tenderness, And constant performance of all the duties of a good Wife This monument is erected in the year 1787, By him who knew her worth and still laments her loss.” This document, along with a hand-drawn sketch of the design, is now on display at The Proprietary House, a poignant reminder of the personal costs of revolution.
