Jane Mecom

Jane Franklin Mecom (1712–1794) was the youngest sister of Benjamin Franklin and was considered one of his closest confidants.[1] Mecom and Franklin corresponded throughout the course of their lives, and some of their letters survive.[2]

Though Mecom never attended school, she learned to read and write under the tutelage of Benjamin Franklin.[3] At the age of fifteen, she married Edward Mecom, a poor saddler who moved into the Franklins' family home, the Blue Ball. While it has been suggested that Benjamin Franklin gave Mecom a spinning wheel as a wedding gift, the historian Jill Lepore argued that this was a misreading of a joke made by Franklin in a letter to his sister.[4][5] Jane and Edward Mecom had twelve children: Josiah Mecom I, Edward "Neddy" Mecom, Benjamin "Benny" Mecom, Ebenezer Mecom, Sarah "Sally" Mecom, Peter Franklin Mecom, John Mecom, Josiah Mecom, Jane Mecom, James Mecom, Mary "Polly" Mecom, and Abiah Mecom.

One son, Benjamin, disappeared during the Battle of Trenton.[4] Two of her sons struggled with mental illness. Mecom made efforts to keep her children out of debtors' prison, the almshouse, and asylums. Several of them succumbed to an illness now believed to be tuberculosis. The religious beliefs of the time taught people not to fear death. In fact, because many children did not live past the age of ten years (about 1/4 of the children born), children were taught not to fear death. To earn money, Mecom boiled soap, took in boarders, and, in 1767, along with her daughters Jenny and Polly, established a small shop to sell caps and bonnets that they created using materials sent from London by a friend of Benjamin Franklin. It is to be noted that women could not earn money without the permission of their husbands, thus it can be believed that Jane's husband recognized the need for his wife to work, as they were not financially stable and he could not provide for them on his own, had he been able to Jane would have been considered a "feme covert", a woman taken care of by a man.[6] Only one of Mecom's children outlived her. Edward Mecom died in 1765 after 38 years of marriage.[3]

Although Jane Mecom and Benjamin Franklin corresponded for decades following his departure from their childhood home, letters written by Mecom before 1758 are lost. Prior to that date, the only record of her writing is a slim book that she made to chronicle her life. Mecom named her chronicle "Book of Ages."[3]

When Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, his will stipulated that Mecom should continue to live in her house, which was owned by Franklin, until she died. The house was later demolished to make room for a memorial to Paul Revere.[3]

Notes

  1. ↑ Ireland, Corydon (21 September 2012). "The tale of Benny and Jenny". news.harvard.edu. Harvard Gazette. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  2. ↑ Carl van Doren, ed., The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom (Princeton University Press, 1950); Carl van Doren, Jane Mecom, or, The Favorite Sister of Benjamin Franklin: Her Life here first narrated from their entire surviving correspondence (NY: Viking Press, 1950)
  3. 1 2 3 4 Lepore, Jill (April 23, 2011). "Poor Jane’s Almanac". New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  4. 1 2 Scott, Anne Firor (1984). Making the Invisible Woman Visible. University of Illinois Press. pp. 5–8.
  5. ↑ Lepore, Jill (2013). Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. Knopf. ISBN 9780307958341.
  6. ↑ Brouffard, James Charles (2007). The Entrepreneurial Ben Franklin, 2nd ed. p. 61.

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