Biografies

BIOGRAPHY
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He was the tenth son of soap maker, Josiah Franklin. Benjamin's mother was Abiah Folger, the second wife of Josiah. In all, Josiah would father 17 children.
Josiah intended for Benjamin to enter into the clergy. However, Josiah could only afford to send hisson to school for one year and clergymen needed years of schooling. But, as young Benjamin loved to read he had him apprenticed to his brother James, who was a printer. After helping James compose pamphlets and set type which was grueling work, 12-year-old Benjamin would sell their products in the streets. A list of Benjamin Franklin's inventions reveals a man of many talents and interests. Itwas the scientist in Ben that brought out the inventor. His natural curiosity about things and the way they work made him try to find ways to make them work better.
Ben had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cutin half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals.

BIOGRAPHY OF
PATRICK HENRY


Early Life and Times
Patrick Henry was born at Studley in Hanover County, Virginia, on May 29, l736. His father JohnHenry was a Scottish-born planter. His mother Sarah Winston Syme was a young widow from a prominent gentry family. Henry attended a local school for a few years and received the remainder of his formal education from his father, who had attended King’s College in Aberdeen.
At fifteen Henry began working as a clerk for a local merchant. A year later, in 1752, he and his older brother Williamopened their own store, which promptly failed. At age eighteen, not yet having found his profession, Henry married sixteen-year-old Sarah Shelton, whose dowry was a 600-acre farm called Pine Slash, a house, and six slaves. Henry’s first attempt as a planter ended when fire destroyed his house in 1757. After a second attempt at storekeeping proved unsuccessful, Henry helped his father-in-law at HanoverTavern, across the road from the county courthouse, and began reading law.
By 1760, nearing his twenty-fourth birthday, Henry decided to become a lawyer. Self-taught and barely prepared, Henry persuaded the panel of distinguished Virginia attorneys Wythe and Randolph that he had the intelligence to warrant admission to the bar. With his energy and talents, and some encouragement from hisinfluential family, Patrick Henry established a thriving practice in the courts of Hanover and adjacent counties.

BIOGRAPHY
THOMAS JEFFERSON


(Born April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, Virginia; died July 4, 1826, Monticello)

ThomasJefferson -- author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia -- voiced the aspirations of a new America as no other individual of his era. As public official, historian, philosopher, and plantation owner, he served his country for over five decades.
His father PeterJefferson was a successful planter and surveyor and his mother Jane Randolph a member of one of Virginia's most distinguished families. Having inherited a considerable landed estate from his father, Jefferson began building Monticello when he was twenty-six years old. Three years later, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, with whom he lived happily for ten years until her death. Their marriage produced...