William Franklin

William Franklin FRSE (22 February^{[citation needed]} 1730 – 17 November 1813) was an American-born attorney, soldier, politician, and colonial administrator. He was the acknowledged extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin. William Franklin was the last colonial Governor of New Jersey (1763–1776), and a steadfast British Empire Loyalist throughout the American Revolutionary War. In contrast, his father Benjamin was, in later life, one of the most prominent of the Patriot leaders of the American Revolution and a Founding Father of the United States.

Following imprisonment by Patriots in 1776 to 1778, William became the chief leader of the Loyalists. From his base in New York City, he organized military units to fight on the British side. In 1782, he went into exile in Britain. He lived in London until his death.

William Franklin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then a colony in British America. He was the extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin, a leading figure in the city. His mother's identity is unknown. Confusion exists about William's birth and parentage because Benjamin Franklin was secretive about his son's origins. In 1750, Benjamin Franklin told his mother that William was nineteen years old, but this may have been an attempt to make the youth appear to have been conceived within marriage. Some older reference books give William's birth year as 1731.

William was raised by his father and Deborah Read, his father's common-law wife; she had been abandoned by her legal husband but not divorced. William always called her his mother. There is some speculation that Deborah Read was William's biological mother, and because of his parents' common-law relationship, the circumstances of his birth were obscured so as not to be politically harmful to him or to their marital arrangement.

William joined a company of Pennsylvania provincial troops in 1746 and spent a winter in Albany in King George's War, obtaining the rank of captain in 1747. As he grew older, he accompanied his father on several missions, including trips to England. Although often depicted as a young child when he assisted his father in the famed kite experiment of 1752, William was at least 21 years old at the time.

As a young man, William became engaged to Elizabeth Graeme, daughter of prominent Philadelphia physician Dr. Thomas Graeme and step-granddaughter of Pennsylvania's 14th Governor, Sir William Keith. Neither family approved of the match, but when William went to London to study law about 1759, he left with the understanding that Elizabeth would wait for him.

William studied law at the Middle Temple, chiefly under Richard Jackson "The Omniscient". While in London, William fathered an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, who was born 22 February 1760. His mother has never been identified, and Temple was placed in foster care.

Later that year, William married Elizabeth Downes on 4 September 1762 at St George's, Hanover Square, in London. She was born in the English colony of Barbados to the sugar planter John Downes and his wife, Elizabeth (née Parsons). She met William while visiting England with her father in 1760. They moved to the New Jersey colony in 1763. Elizabeth died in 1777 while he was imprisoned as a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War. She was interred beneath the altar of St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan, where she had resided after the British evacuated Perth Amboy. The memorial plaque on the wall at St. Paul's was commissioned by William Franklin from London, where he went into exile following the war. He was a widower for more than ten years.