Our Lives in History

“Do insignificant lives on the margins of great events merit their own memorials?”

That is a question Susan Dunn asks in her her review of Book of Ages: The Life and opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore.

Who was Jane Franklin?

Jane Franklin married Edward Mecom, a poor saddler, in 1727 when she was fifteen years old...

Jane gave birth to twelve children—two of whom went mad—and buried eleven of them..

 At fifty-three, Jane became a widow, and the years after her husband’s death were scarcely less dark and troubled. She kept a boardinghouse and toiled as a seamstress. Throughout her life, she worked, overworked, and struggled...

“The Ravages of war (American Revolution) are Horrible,” she wrote. Jane spent the war years wandering, seeking safe shelter with family and friends in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia. “I am Grown such a Vagrant,” she sighed. After the war, always in need of money, she labored to survive—and relied on her brother’s assistance to stay afloat.

Who was her brother? Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin ran away from home in 1723 when he was seventeen; he became a printer, philosopher, scientist, and diplomat in London and Paris and a Founding Father of the United States. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution, and the Constitution.

From 1776 until 1785, Benjamin Franklin was the American minister in France, successfully securing crucial French economic and military assistance for the Revolutionary army. Plainly dressed, bespectacled, and unpowdered, he brought the spirit of the new nation to France and became the toast of Paris. “My Face is now almost as well known as that of the Moon,” he bragged to his sister.

There was an ocean of difference between the brother’s and sister’s lives, and  Lepore explores the constraints on women of the age in seeking the opportunity and "enlightenment" men enjoyed.

But I enjoy the first question. As a journal-keeper and as an "insignificant" life on the margin of history, I would argue that our stories, our battles, our perseverance, are the reasons to bother with the "greater" history at all.

What say you?