Franklin gave his son-in-law about a thousand dollars to assist him in the purchase of a stock of merchandise. The children, born to this happy couple, were intelligent and beautiful, and they greatly contributed to the happiness of their grandmother, who cherished them with a grandmother's most tender love. In the year 1862, there were one hundred and ten surviving descendants of Richard Bache and Sarah Franklin. Ten of these were serving in the Union army perilling their lives to maintain that national fabric, which their illustrious ancestor had done so much to establish. Franklin was by no means a man of one idea. His comprehensive mind seemed to grasp all questions of statesmanship, of philanthropy, of philosophy.
During the ten years of his residence in England he visited the hospitals, carefully examined their management, and transmitted to his home the result of his observations. This was probably the origin of the celebrity which the medical schools of Philadelphia have attained. He visited the silk manufactories, and urged the adoption of that branch of industry, as peculiarly adapted to our climate and people. Ere long he had the pleasure of presenting to the queen a piece of American silk, which she accepted and wore as a dress. As silk was an article not produced in England, the government was not offended by the introduction of that branch of industry. For Hartford college he procured a telescope, which cost about five hundred dollars. This was, in those days, an important event.
The renowned Captain Cook returned from his first voyage around the world. The narrative of his adventures, in the discovery of new islands, and new races of men, excited almost every mind in England and America. Franklin was prominent in the movement, to raise seventy-five thousand dollars, to fit out an expedition to send to those benighted islanders the fowls, the quadrupeds and the seeds of Europe. He wrote, in an admirable strain,
"Many voyages have been undertaken with views of profit or of plunder, or to gratify resentment. But a voyage is now proposed to visit a distant people on the other side of the globe, not to cheat them, not to rob them: not to seize their lands or to enslave their persons, but merely to do them good, and make them, as far as in our power lies, to live as comfortable as ourselves."