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BY WARREN BOROSON
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Kelly Ripa, the quick-witted TV hostess, supposedly lives there, alongside a lot of other famous people. It’s rich (median family income is $132,000), white (88.9 percent), and registered Republican (by an almost three-to-one ratio). The median house price is $1,306,546.
But Franklin Lakes, in northwestern Bergen County, has a startling secret. A secret you won’t learn about even by Googling official publications about Franklin Lakes.
Prepare yourself for a shock.
The place is NOT named after Benjamin Franklin, that awesomely creative Founding Father. Possibly the most gifted of all Americans. The fellow who invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, named the electrical poles (“positive” and “negative”), improved the glass armonium, started the first lending library, and helped our country defeat England. Who, in addition to all his other virtues, freed his slaves before he died.
Once, on a visit to England, he tried to meet with Sir Isaac Newton—but Sir Isaac was elusive. What a memorable encounter that would have been! Two of the smartest human beings who ever lived.
No, Franklin Lakes (and its predecessor, Franklin Township) is named after William Franklin, former colonial governor of New Jersey (1763-1776), the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, and a fierce Loyalist.
A Loyalist! Not so bad as naming a New Jersey community after (say) Benedict Arnold, or any Northern community after General William Tecumseh Sherman, but in the same general ballpark.
Another New Jersey community, Franklin Township, in 2000 officially declared that it had been named after Benjamin, not William.
Although William (1730-1813) and his father had been close-–William had run around with the kite when his father made his famous experiment—they fell out when the revolution began. And they were never reconciled.
At the start of the revolution, William was arrested and imprisoned. His imprisonment was so harsh—in a solitary cell, in Connecticut—that over the course of three years it undermined his health. Upon his release he went to England, where he lived out his life, laboring on behalf of fellow Loyalists. He tried to reconcile with his father, but in effect was rebuffed.
Whose fault was it?
