April Fool's Day Jumble answers.
 

Grant.
Gourd.
Zenith.
Stocky.

Jumble - Houston Chronicle

The Grand Ohio Company and the Walpoles.
 

Ben Franklin had invested in a stocky enterprise involving an Indian grant of land and some of the richest and most influential British. It was a company called the Grand Ohio Company which was the zenith of Franklin's renown in Britain among his contemporaries and would take his often enemy and sometime friend Lord Hillsborough to the nadir of his own position. Hillsborough took on these investors including the very rich Richard and Thomas Walpole to thwart Franklin's business scheme. The king even stepped in to get the Grand Ohio Company's grant approved which it was. The problem is that events in Boston and elsewhere doomed the company for which Franklin had fought so hard. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401804378.html You can just see Franklin's work in this YouTube video if his Grand Ohio Company plan had been successful. We would probably have a State named Vandalia there however. Wonder if we would have been hearing more gourd banjos? http://youtu.be/2x3Ajm4sr7E

Tuesday April 2 Jumble answers.
 

Yield.
Afraid.
Stigma.
Hitch.

Jumble - Houston Chronicle

For checking today's (4-3-2013) Word Jumble answers:

http://www.uclick.com/client/sea/tmj.../03/index.html

Franklin did not yield in his fight to save the friendship between the colonies and Mother England. In 1772, he had mistakenly hitched his wagon to someone who would steer it right into very dangerous ground when he sent some letters he received from a unnamed source to Thomas Cushing, one of his Massachusetts supporters and Speaker of the MA Assembly. Cushing was instructed by Franklin that these letters were not for the publication as they were from Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts. The Hutchinson letters would come to have a great stigma attached to them when they were published by John and Samuel Adams. Governor Hutchinson had advised on how to subdue the unrest in the colonies. Franklin had thought that by privately showing how misguided men like Hutchinson were he and his followers could save the colonies from going to war. Instead, what Franklin was afraid would happen did. The Hutchinson letters pushed the Massachusetts Assembly to pass a resolution declaring that it was not subservient to Parliament. http://www.ask.com/wiki/Hutchinson_L...=3986&qsrc=999

An Edict by the King of Prussia. September 22, 1773. The Public Advertiser.
 

If you enjoy Ben Franklin's wit, this might be of interest. It is his satirical take on the coming storm that would be the American Revolution. http://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=1-4-2D9

A little break for me and others from the Word Jumbles.

Jumble answers for Wednesday, April 3, 2013.
 

Jumble - Houston Chronicle

Awful.
Cranky.
Agenda.
Knelt.

The furor over the publication of the Hutchinson letters landed Ben Franklin into the Cockpit in January 1794. The Privy Council had summoned him into a room where Henry VIII had watched birds try to kill one another probably much like the fights between factions trying to present potential fertile wives to him had been. On the agenda of the Privy Council was the removal of Hutchinson from his post as Massachusetts Governor. What was really happening though was that they wanted a scapegoat for the whole Hutchinson letter mess and were looking at Ben Franklin to fit the role. Franklin did not even have legal representation in what to him looked like a trial. This made him awfully cranky. He figuratively knelt before the Council and requested time to find counsel and to prepare his case. He asked for three weeks during which time news of the Boston Tea Party reached England. http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org...s/2011news.htm

Jumble - Houston Chronicle

Thursday Word Jumble answers:

Pivot.
Remove.
Honey.
Genius.

Silence was golden for Ben Franklin while he was in the Cockpit on January 29, 1774 facing the adder like tongued Alexander Wedderburn. Wedderburn even used a pun of stating that Franklin was the "prime conductor" of the anger against the British government because of the Hutchinson letters. Watching the roasting were all the honey tongued courtiers as well as Franklin's arch enemy by that time Lord Hillsborough who wanted payback for his removal from the grace of George III and the Prime Minister. They did not give Frankin much room to pivot from the ire so he just remained stoic and took the barbs. Franklin did have a few friends on that January 29 day like Edmund Burke a genius of a pragmatic political writer as well as the scientist Joseph Priestly and Lord Le Despencer (Francis Dashwood). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Priestley http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/histori...e_edmund.shtml http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/se...od&OConly=true

Break from the Word Jumbles--art featuring Ben Franklin from the UK's NPG.
 

Art on Ben Franklin from the National Portrait Gallery of the United Kingdom:


National Portrait Gallery - Person - Benjamin Franklin

Friday's Word Jumble answers.
 

http://www.chron.com/entertainment/c.../comic/Jumble/

Onion.
Theme.
Mutate.
Refuse.

For checking Saturday's Word Jumble answers: http://www.uclick.com/client/sea/tmj.../06/index.html

Franklin's reputation would soon mutate as he stood up against public pressure while in England to recant his still strong belief in saving the relationship between England and her colonies in North America. Events at home would cause great grief with him however as his wife was gravely ill from the long term effects of a stroke five years before and his illegitimate son William--now Royal Governor on New Jersey-- was an avid Loyalist bent on making sure his father stayed on the side of the British in the oncoming struggle. This was the theme of many letters between father and son. Both refused to bend to the deepening sentiments of the other. Ben Franklin to his practical viewpoints of what would happen if the colonies rebelled and William Franklin's staunch support of King George III and Lord North's policies. Franklin recommended a Continental Congress boycott English goods both coming in and going out of the colonies which would demonstrate how much England needed her American colonies. The 1774 letters between Ben and William show quite an interesting view of Benjamin's growing disassociation with England even though he still lived there. Getting at his real feelings though is like peeling an onion as they seem to change with each layer peeled as the year 1774 progressed. http://www.ushistory.org/declaration...d/congress.htm

Saturday Word Jumble answers.
 

Outlet.
Lawful.
Proud.
Ranch.

While still in London, Ben Franklin was proud to still attempt a reconciliation between the colonies and England. He played chess with Lady Caroline Howe-- sister of Admiral Richard Howe and General William Howe--who attempted to cheer up Franklin by agreeing with him that he had been treated poorly by various ministers. At least, these kind of private meetings let Franklin have a lawful outlet for his disappointment. Lord Richard Howe even attempted to bribe Franklin with an offer of "any reward in the power of the government to bestow" if he came up with a new plan for keeping the colonies and England on friendly terms. Howe and others did not find his latest attempt at negotiation "Hints for a Conversation" as being worth a bid on the ranch so to speak.

April 7, 2013 Word Jumble answers.
 

Sunday's Word Jumble answers:

Sizzle.
Behind.
Bathe.
Guide.

Ben Franklin and his grandson William Temple were behind on the news that would sizzle the passions of many a rebel and push them into quick action. The Minutemen of Concord bathed in the April 19, 1775 victory over the Redcoats and the lessons learned in those fights would guide many frontiersmen to join in the War. Franklin and his grandson were on a ship crossing the Atlantic during which they also took several the water's temperature three or four times a day. They were charting the Gulf Stream. http://www.masshist.org/revolution/lexington.php http://www.nha.org/history/hn/HN-v44n2-gulfstream.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles...on_and_Concord

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Fea...franklin_2.php (This NASA site says it was on the way to England in 1775 but that sounds wrong from my research so I sent NASA an e-mail about it!) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003] , p. 290.