to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past
life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used
and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope,
though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be
exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling
me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others
have done: the complexion of my future fortune being known
to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions.

The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity
in collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands,
furnished me with several particulars relating to our ancestors.
From these notes I learned that the family had lived in the
same village, Ecton, in Northamptonshire, for three hundred years,
and how much longer he knew not (perhaps from the time when the name
of Franklin, that before was the name of an order of people,
was assumed by them as a surname when others took surnames
all over the kingdom), on a freehold of about thirty acres,
aided by the smith's business, which had continued in the family
till his time, the eldest son being always bred to that business;
a custom which he and my father followed as to their eldest sons.
When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an account
of their births, marriages and burials from the year 1555 only,
there being no registers kept in that parish at any time preceding.
By that register I perceived that I was the youngest son of the
youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas,
who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he grew too old to
follow business longer, when he went to live with his son John,
a dyer at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served
an apprenticeship. There my grandfather died and lies buried.