Jane Franklin - One Woman's Story, Almost Forgotten

Have you heard of Jane Franklin? 

The picture on the cover of the book won't give you a clue. It is a portrait of her granddaughter, painted in 1765. 

No picture of Jane survives.  

The fact that she ever lived would have long been forgotten, had it not been for her older brother, known to the majority of Americans (colonists) of his time and of ours.

Benjamin Franklin. 

I happened to hear the book's author, Jill Lepore, interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air almost a year ago.   I added the title to my "To Read" list, then forgot about it until July when I was searching for a book to take on vacation. Not quite a beach read for our beach vacation to Maui, but I was purposefully looking for a book of substance - about a woman of substance.
The trip to Hawaii was the culmination of my 2-year journey to visit a labyrinth envisioned and/or built by a woman in each state.  I carried their stories with me as I traveled to meet the 50th woman, walk her labyrinth and hear her story.

The power of stories 

Only through listening to women tell their stories 

have I learned how deeply another person's story can impact my own.

All we know of Jane Franklin's story is through Benjamin's letters to her, the few surviving letters of hers to him and other family members, and her Book of Ages, where she recorded the births and deaths of her children. It is surprising that Jane, born in 1712 "when the Massachusetts poor laws required that boys be taught to write and girls to read," learned to write at all. Benjamin taught her, before he ran away from home to write his own story.

While her brother became famous, Jane lived on the edge of poverty with a husband, constantly in debt,  and a total of twelve children, eleven of whom died. She cared for her ailing parents and took in boarders to help with expenses.

                                                    She worked hard, very hard. 

She loved, lost, and lost again. 

She read whenever she could 

and wrote her letters.

No one knows where she was buried. Perhaps near the 20-foot granite obelisk erected for Benjamin in Boston's Granary Burying Ground.

At the end of her book, Jill Lepore quotes Virginia Woolf's essay, "The Art of Biography":

The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left a record of that life, worthy of biography -- the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is greatness? And what is smallness?

It is Jane herself who answers Virginia's probing questions. In her own hand. In a letter to her brother.

"I am willing to Depart out of it [life] when ever my Grat Benifactor has no farther Use for me.
I know the most Insignificant creature on Earth may be made some Use of in the Scale of Beings, may Touch some Spring."

The first page of Jane's Book of Ages

 



  

My OWN Labyrinth - Part 2

When I daydreamed of building a labyrinth in our yard, I naively imagined that we would whip it into shape in a weekend or two.

Labyrinth laborers 

preparing the ground

measuring 

marking 

hauling

setting the design

then

stepping back 

arms folded

proudly

proclaiming 

it

"Finished!"  

It is Step 2 in my 3-Step Plan. 

1. Complete visits

2. Build labyrinth

3. Write *book

But two weeks into the project, sitting on a pile of bricks, I slow down long enough to hear that voice, the one that lets me fret a bit before imparting her wisdom. Today it comes in the form of a question. 

"Have you learned nothing on this journey?" she asks. 

I detect impatience.

Of course, I know where she's headed with this line of questioning. I know...but I forget.

The path takes time to walk. 

There are lessons to be learned in the doing, the day-to-day, the creation.

Pay attention to what is before you.

Breathe.

The "army" of laborers has temporarily left. Without them I could not have begun. 

Anne Hornstein, whose labyrinth in Florida was the first I walked on my fifty-state journey,
helps me measure the center. She "happened" to be driving to Colorado and
offered to consecrate the space and help with the lay-out. 

Drew unloads 100+ bricks and pushes them,
one wheelbarrow load at a time,
to the labyrinth site (opposite side of the house.)

Our son-in-law, Ben, precisely measures
the center circle of bricks.

The labyrinth and I share the space for quiet hours, surrounded by trees, birdsong and inquisitive mosquitoes, only moderately repelled by Deep Woods Off. 

It won't be finished for several months, as I go back and forth to New York, and as other hands take turns digging trenches and laying bricks.
I take a deep breath and realize that's as it should be.

  

The labyrinth is growing, 

one brick at a time.

As am I.

 *working title of book -

  Labyrinth Journeys

 Fifty States… Fifty-One Stories