Deborah Read
Born around 1708 in either Birmingham, England, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Deborah Read grew up in the Quaker faith and one of four children born to John and Sarah Read. Not much is known about her early life, but her father was a relatively successful contract carpenter in Philadelphia.
While still a teen, Read met 17-year-old Benjamin Franklin. According to his autobiography, he had recently arrived in Philadelphia from Boston, seeking work as a printer, and Deborah Read laughed at him as he walked up the road while awkwardly carrying and eating three large bread rolls. Somehow, a romance started after the amusing meeting, and Read’s father consented that Franklin could rent a room in their house. In 1724, Benjamin Franklin asked Deborah Read to marry him; she wanted to accept, but her mother forbade the union, worried about Franklin’s upcoming journey to Europe and his lack of financial means. The young couple decided to wait but stay engaged…until Franklin penned a harsh letter while in England, declaring that he was ending the relationship and never intended to return to Philadelphia.
Sarah Read convinced her daughter to marry John Rogers who was either a carpenter or a potter. Eventually, Deborah Read reluctantly agreed and married Rogers on August 5, 1725. With unfortunate irony given the criticism against Franklin, John Rogers had growing financial debts and failed to remain employed. Then, four months after the wedding, a friend of Rogers’s arrived in Philadelphia from England and revealed to Deborah that her husband was already married and had left his first wife in England. Deborah informally separated from her husband and refused to lived with him, though she could not get a divorce; meanwhile, Rogers added more debts and spent her dowry which she could not legally control in the situation. In 1727, Rogers disappeared; reports which could not be confirmed claimed that he had sailed to the British West Indies where he had been killed in a fight.
Shortly after Rogers’s disappearance, Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia. He and Deborah Read rekindled their relationship and decided to marry. However, Pennsylvania laws would not allow her a divorce on grounds of abandonment and she could not prove she was a widow. If she legally or religiously married Franklin and the missing Rogers returned, she could face charges and punishments of a public whipping and life imprisonment. To avoid this situation, Read and Franklin chose to observe a common-law marriage. On September 1, 1730, they declared to their friends that they would live together as husband and wife. The couple had two children: Francis Folger (died of smallpox as a child) and Sarah. Read also cared for and raised her husband’s illegitimate son, William.
Over the next two decades, Franklin became a popular writer and successful printer and publisher. He took part in politics and became the first postmaster. He invented the lightning rod and tested scientific methods and new ideas at every chance. In addition to running their household, Deborah Read sometimes worked in Franklin’s printing shop and oversaw the operations when he was absent. She may have sold medical herbs and concoctions in the shop as her own entrepreneurial effort. During her husband’s long absences from home, she monitored the arriving correspondence—sometimes helping to forge or continue Franklin’s connections with European scientists. She may have had an interest in scientific studies, too, but few of her letters survive, and history’s caricatures of Deborah Read have not always been kind or proven to be accurate.
On all of his trips to Europe during her lifetime, Franklin asked Read to travel with him, but she refused, fearing the dangers of ocean travel. She remained at home, running their business, raising their children and participating in Quaker meetings during his trip from 1757 to 1762. Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but within months planned to return to Europe.
When the couple said goodbye in 1764, Franklin would be away from home for 10 years on diplomatic duties for the colonies, and Deborah Read never saw her husband again. They corresponded, and she informed him of her declining health, claiming it was made worse from his prolonged absence. Beginning in 1768, Read suffered from strokes which reduced her memory and ability to speak. Franklin continued to write to his wife, but by late 1773 she chose not to reply or was physically unable to do so. Deborah Read died on December 19, 1774, from the effects of another stroke. She was buried at Christ Church Curial Ground in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin mourned her death. He returned to Philadelphia in 1775 and in the following years became a leader and important diplomat for the United States during the American Revolution. When he died in 1790, Franklin was buried beside Deborah Read, at his request.
