Ben Franklin Travel Bug KEY

To hang out near New Jersey so folks can use it to get into the A Hide for My 3rd Son cache.

Ben Franklin, then and now, was one of the most famous of those who took part in the American Revolution.  He began life at the 15^th (of 17) child of a soap and candle maker.  He didn’t go to school very long, was apprenticed to his brother, ran way to a city he didn’t have any connections with, and in his first major business venture ended up stuck in London with no money.  He went on to be the most fantastically successful American the colonies had known, making money from his work as a printer, an almanac writer, and through investments in land in Philadelphia.  He was so successful that he retired in 1748 and age 42.  He went on to share his wealth to improve Philadelphia – starting the first library in the colonies, helping start the first hospital in the colonies (Pennsylvania Hospital… it’s still there), starting the American Philosophical Society, and helped to get street lights, street sweeping, and fire insurance for Philadelphia.  Oh, and he was an inventor and scientist of course, doing that thing with the key and the kite and inventing the armonica, the lightning rod, the Franklin stove and more, none of which he every bothered to patent.  It’s little remembered today, but he moved to London in 1757 to try to join British high society.  He’d spend almost all of the next 18 years there.

But when things went bad between England and the colonies, Franklin hopped a ship and came home.  He helped Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence, helped round up votes to pass that document, went to France to help bring that country into the war, helped play France and Britain off of each other during the negotiations for the Treaty of Paris, and then, after the war, ended up taking part in the Constitutional Convention. 

This travel bug is the KEY to opening the "A Hide for My 3^rd Son” cache.  Please keep it in the general New Jersey area so that folks can find it to open up that cache!