Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/349

 FRANKLIN IN 1777.

AFTER THE PRINT REPRODUCED FROM THE DRAWING OF COHIN.

as closely as might be, on the edge of the wilderness, the market borough of an English shire. The town had had its first big boom and was near wallowing in its first reaction,—houses empty, more money in demand. debts oppressive, and all hope gone, when (1723) the great genius, Benjamin Franklin, who was to be its second founder and save it from Friend and Precisian, Palatinate Dutch, German, and Pietist, walked up Market Street