Inside One of the Greatest Collections of Ben Franklin Materials Ever Assembled

I think the story that the Snyder Collection tells about Benjamin Franklin is that there's even more to Franklin than we think we know. Franklin is one of the most notoriously difficult to pin down founders. The collections around Franklin are really fun because it's so hard to get at who he is. So each one of these is another little clue into what he was thinking, what interested him, what excited him. He was someone who could relate to everybody. He cared about the common good, had so many different interests that everyday people could find themselves in him as well. The J.T. Snyder Collection is the greatest private collection relating to Benjamin Franklin that has been put together in the last century and a quarter. And it's probably the greatest that can ever be put together going forward. It has everything that you would want relating to Benjamin Franklin's life. Books that he printed, books that he wrote, books that he presented to friends, books presented to him by friends, letters that he wrote to friends in America and abroad, publications of his scientific experiments, a virtually complete run of poor Richard Almanacs. This is a full picture of Benjamin Franklin. Now for any other historical figure, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, you would have duplication. You'd have things that were pretty much the same. With Franklin, he encompasses worlds. He's like a Walt Whitman poem. You have Franklin the printer, Franklin the author, Franklin the inventor, the Franklin stove for instance. You have Franklin the scientist. He's the one who discovered that lightning carries electricity. You have Franklin the diplomat who won support from France during the American Revolution which assured us independence. Franklin the wit. Whatever you can think of, Franklin had his hands in it. Benjamin Franklin is essentially the mascot of Philadelphia. He's someone who has this massive curiosity. He's someone who builds networks and works with others. Any cultural touchstone of Philadelphia, Franklin was involved. The Pennsylvania Hospital, the University of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the Library Company of Philadelphia. All of these have Franklin's fingerprints all over them. He was president, i.e. governor of Pennsylvania for years. We have a commission that Franklin signed when he was the president of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety. This was a body that ruled Pennsylvania for only a period of about two months. So all of the documents they produced are very scarce because they were in power so briefly. It's not that Franklin made Philadelphia. It's really a symbiotic relationship. Franklin couldn't have done what he did in Philadelphia anywhere else at the time. He also traveled to London as a young man and thought very seriously about staying. And he might have thrived there too, but he would not have had an imprint on London in the way that he did in Philadelphia. I always think of Franklin as very much in the DNA of the city, but the city itself also influenced him and the kind of civic actor he could be. The Library Company is emblematic of the kinds of ideals that Franklin had about access and about self-improvement. He was obsessed with the idea of improvement, whether of your actual self or of your community. The Library Company, founded in 1731, is the oldest library open to the public in North America. It opened with 50 subscribers and the idea was that anybody who subscribed two pounds would be able to borrow books. What's interesting about the Snyder Collection is there are several pieces in it that touch on Franklin's affiliation with the Library Company, including a couple of membership documents signed by Franklin and one of his very earliest surviving signatures from 1732, where he's acknowledging receipt of dues from a Library Company member. If you're interested in printing history, you can collect his imprints. Books that he printed have nothing to do with the letters that he wrote. I would say Benjamin Franklin was the greatest printer of his time. I'm a print scholar. I'm someone who has studied it for a very long time and every time I have a Benjamin Franklin printing in front of me, I'm always wowed. He makes you want to read things as opposed to just having a block of text in front of you. It's more artistic. It's like a new way of looking at the world. The Snyder Collection has one of just two copies of a broadside printing of The Way to Wealth. It was a text that was usually printed in pamphlet form as a little thin book. A broadside is one big sheet of paper printed on one side and on this broadside you have a continuous run of the best of Franklin, one zinger after another. Working where I do, you learn to be frugal, so I think a penny saved is a penny earned is one that I've always taken to heart. Honestly, I think one of the most surprising things about Franklin was that he supported the Revolution. That might seem antithetical because everyone knows he did, but the thing you have to remember, the other founders are much younger. They have a less to lose. Franklin was in his 70s. He had an international reputation. His son has been appointed the governor of New Jersey. I mean, this man has made it and he's got a lot of irons in the fire in England that he abandons to support the American Revolution. Jay Snyder has a letter in his collection that William Franklin wrote when he was imprisoned as a loyalist during the Revolutionary War at the very same time that his father was putting everything on the line to win independence. And it says a great deal about the depth of his conviction. It's really surprising that he became a revolutionary. I found myself in reading the letters especially often stopping and reflecting on what Franklin was writing. There's a letter from 1786 to a friend of his in France who was kind of implying, eh, I bet people over there are starting to regret breaking away from Great Britain. Things aren't so great. And Franklin writes back, you're completely wrong. Everywhere the Declaration of Independence is celebrated and July 4th is a major holiday already. I think the year of America 250 is an ideal time to be thinking about Franklin and for a Franklin collection to be offered. Franklin's life really paralleled the development of the United States. There could be an entire book of quotations just drawn from Franklin, from anecdotes from his writings. The line that has always resonated with me and I don't know why is when the Congress was debating whether or not to actually endorse the Declaration of Independence and break away from Great Britain. And even within Congress there were those who didn't want to take that dramatic a step. And Franklin said, gentlemen we must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately. And we know the result. Congress voted for independence and here we are 250 years later celebrating that achievement due in great part to Benjamin Franklin.