William, who was more adept at military arts than his father, assisted Franklin significantly. With scant military training, Franklin nonetheless became the most senior military leader in a critical part of British America.Īccompanying Franklin as aide-de-camp was his 25-year-old son, William, who had served in King George’s War as a teenager and also helped supply Braddock eight months earlier. Franklin had helped General Braddock the year before, so when news arrived of new raids by the French and Indians in the 70 mile stretch of frontier from Bethlehem to Reading, the Pennsylvania Colony’s governor, Robert Morris, felt obliged to turn to him to bolster the frontier. Having lived through clashes between the French and British in the 1740s, he understood the importance of a staunch defense and wrote a bill in 1755 calling for the creation of a militia. It fell to Franklin to slow the flow of refugees trudging toward Philadelphia and halt the swelling enemy, bent on pressing the English to the Atlantic.įranklin was made a military commander because of his experience in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Gnadenhütten (“huts of grace,” at present-day Weissport), a Moravian settlement, had been attacked by Indians in November, then again in early January after militia had been sent there to fortify it. Edward Braddock’s British and American army had been destroyed along the Monongahela River to the west in July marauding Indians had struck within 80 miles of Philadelphia and 400 settlers had been killed in the region since summer and others had been taken prisoner.
#Raid alert in lehigh valley full#
Now the otherwise unathletic Franklin found himself in the role of military chief, leading 170 men deep into countryside overrun by Shawnee, Delaware and Frenchmen who had been attacking English settlements with abandon.īy 1756, the French and Indian War was in full swing, especially in Pennsylvania: Gen. He had received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London in 1753 for his “curious Experiments and Observations on Electricity” and founded a college in Philadelphia, as well as a lending library and other civic institutions. The orders came from an unlikely figure: Benjamin Franklin, 50 years old, already rich, retired from his printing business and notably famous for his inventions. The commander ordered quick fortifications against further attack, then burial parties. Weapons ready, slogging into the deserted village, the men and their commander were appalled at what they saw: dead soldiers and civilians and evidence of a hasty retreat.
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