Jane Franklin—Benjamin Franklin’s sister—got married when she was 15 and gave birth to 12 children before she turned 40. “She became a wife, a mother, and a widow. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution. She strained to form the letters of her name,” Jill Lepore wrote, in 2013.
The lesser-known Franklin, to Lepore, was as interesting as her brother, eventually becoming the subject of “Book of Ages,” Lepore’s 2013 biography of Jane and a study of her letters. Read Lepore’s essay, where she traces the connections not only between the Franklin siblings but between Jane Franklin and Lepore’s own mother, Marjorie: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/08/the-...