Quite the Jokester
Franklin excelled in the art of hoaxes and practical jokes. He was sly and ambitious and wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. For example, he used a fake name to gain access to the local paper. His brother ran the newspaper, which Franklin’s father had purchased for him as an investment decades earlier.

Instead of giving up, he began writing letters to the editor as a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogwood. He was 16 at the time. His popularity grew quickly, and he received several marriage proposals from devoted readers. When his brother discovered what he was doing, he became enraged and stopped printing him, but he eventually moved on to greater things.