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 Here lies the story of many families 

torn apart by the revolutionary war. 

Although the colonies "won" the war no 

one really did. Families were torn apart 

there were too many deaths to count 

and so much heartbreak.

First on our collection of   true tales from 

the revolutionary war is the story of 

Benjamin Franklin and his feud between 

his son William Franklin.

Now Benjamin was a good father he paid his sons 

way through school till he was 20 years old then he 

worked with his father. After 1768 Benjamin and 

his son would never be the same again. Benjamin 

became publicly a Patriot while   William stayed 

loyal to his king. Before and after the battle of 

Lexington and Concord, William continued to act as 

George III’s loyal subject. As Royal Governor and 

adherent of the British constitution, he urged 

conciliation on both sides.

 As the war heated up, William engaged 

in what was inaccurately labeled 

treasonous correspondence with 

members of Parliament and the King’s 

ministers. His letters provided 

information on American troop 

movements as well as pleas for 

reasonableness on the part of the 

crown.

William was arrested by order of the 

Continental Congress but refused to give his 

“parole” or word that he would stop his 

counter-revolutionary activities.

Over a two-year period beginning in 1776 

shortly after the signing of the Declaration of 

Independence, William was confined under 

increasingly horrific conditions.

George Washington, who had dined with 

William and his beautiful wife at Governor 

Franklin’s mansion before the war, pleaded for 

humane treatment of his friend. The chairman 

of the Congressional committee that had 

ordered William’s imprisonment rejected 

Washington’s pleas.

The chairman was Benjamin Franklin. At war’s 

end, William told a British historian that his 

father had actively sought his imprisonment.

During the revolution, horrors were committed 

by both sides. Some Loyalist prisoners of war 

were kept in an abandoned mine shafts. 

William’s final place of captivity   was arguably 

worse, Litchfield jail in Connecticut, which 

William described without exaggeration as “the 

very worst jail in America.”

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