Jane Franklin Mecom (March 27, 1712 – May 7, 1794) was the youngest sister of Benjamin Franklin and was considered one of his closest confidants. Mecom and Franklin corresponded for sixty-three years, throughout the course of Ben Franklin's life, and some of their letters survive.
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Early life and family
Mecom's father had seven children from a previous marriage. Mecom was the youngest of ten children to Josiah Franklin's second wife, Abiah Folger. Jane Franklin was born at Blue Ball house on Union Street in Boston, Massachusetts on March 27, 1712.
Mecom never attended school, as public schools in Boston did not enroll women. Though Mecom never attended school, she learned to read and write under the tutelage of Benjamin Franklin. This education under Benjamin Franklin continued until Mecom was 11 years old. In 1723, Benjamin ran away to become a printer in New York and escape his indenture to his brother, leaving his 11-year-old sister alone. Franklin first wrote a letter to Mecom in 1726, and their correspondence continued until Franklin's death in 1790.
At 15, she was married off, although the legal marrying age in Massachusetts was 16, and her brothers and most of her sisters had married by 24, none of them before 20. She was married to a nearly illiterate 22-year-old saddler, Edward Mecom, a poor Scottish immigrant whose swings of mental instability were inherited by at least two of his sons. Constantly in deep debt, he spent much of his marriage in debtors' prison, leaving his wife to be the family breadwinner. Mecom's historians agree that this likely was not a love match. Mark Van Doren was the first biographer of Jane Franklin and his Jane Mecom: Franklin's Favorite Sister (1950) draws on years of correspondence between Jane and Benjamin Franklin. Jill Lepore theorizes that the young girl could have had an affair and become pregnant out of wedlock from it, and the marriage was an attempt to save the family dignity. If there had been a child she miscarried it; her first son, Josiah Mecom, was born two years later and she named him for her father. He died at age 11 months.