Ben Franklin's World

By Liz Covart

Society & Culture History

What's Ben Franklin's World about?

This is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history. It is produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

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372 A History of the Myaamia

11.28.2023

Early America was a diverse place. A significant part of this diversity came from the fact that there were at least 1,000 different Indigenous tribes and nations living in different areas of North America before the Spanish and other European ...

Ben Franklin's World episodes:

11.28.2023 372 A History of the Myaamia Early America was a diverse place. A significant part of this diversity came from the fact that there were at least 1,000 different Indigenous tribes and nations living in different areas of North America before the Spanish and other European ...
11.14.2023 371 An Archive of Indigenous Slavery Long before European arrival in the Americas, Indigenous people and nations practiced enslavement. Their version of enslavement looked different from the version Christopher Columbus and his fellow Europeans practiced, but Indigenous slavery also shared many similarities with the Euro-American practice ...
10.31.2023 370 The Ruin of All Witches Happy Halloween! In honor of the 31st of October and All Hallows Eve, we investigate a historical incident of witches and witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651. Malcolm Gaskill, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East ...
10.24.2023 369 Livestock and Animal Breeds in Early America Establishing colonies in North America took an astonishing amount of work. Colonists had to clear trees, eventually remove stumps from newly cleared fields, plant crops to eat and sell, weed and tend those crops, and then they had to harvest ...
10.10.2023 368 Legacies of the Brafferton Indian School The Brafferton Indian School has a long and complicated legacy. Chartered with the College of William & Mary in 1693, the Brafferton Indian School’s purpose was to educate young Indigenous boys in the ways of English religion, language, and culture. ...
09.26.2023 367 The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 In 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England granted a royal charter for two institutions of higher education in the Colony of Virginia. The first institution was the College of William & Mary. The second institution was ...
09.12.2023 366 Michael Taylor, James Wilson & the U.S. Constitution On September 17, 1787, the members of the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by signing the final draft of their new proposed government. The document they signed was the United States Constitution, which is why the United States marks Constitution ...
08.29.2023 365 Road Trip 2023: Early Settlement at Île Ste. Jean 2020 commemorated the 300th anniversary of French presence on Prince Edward Island. Like much of North America, the Canadian Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island were highly contested regions. In fact, ...
08.15.2023 364 Road Trip 2023: La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North America. Matthew ...
08.01.2023 363 Road Trip 2023: Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park About 620 miles north of New Orleans and 62 miles south of St. Louis, sits the town of Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri. Established in 1750 by the French, Ste. Geneviéve reveals much about what it was like to establish a colony ...
07.18.2023 362: David W. Penney, Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has an exhibit called Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations. This exhibit allows you to see treaties the United States has made with American Indian nations ...
07.04.2023 361 The Fourth of July in 2026 July 4, 2023 marks the 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States. In three short years, we will be marking the 250th anniversary of these events. How are historians thinking about the American ...
06.20.2023 360 Kyera Singleton, Slavery and Freedom in Massachusetts Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, because, on June 19, 1865, United States General ...
06.06.2023 359 Jen Manion, Trans-ing Gender in Early America “People are complicated” is a truism that holds in the past and the present. Seldom do we find a person where all of their actions and thoughts are black and white. What we see instead is that people are colorful ...
05.23.2023 358 Charles Tingley, St. Augustine & Early Florida For much of the colonial period, Spain claimed almost all of North America as Spanish territory. It displayed this claim on maps and in the administrative units it created to govern this vast territory: New Spain and La Florida. Charles ...
05.09.2023 357 Eric Jay Dolin, Privateering in the American Revolution How did the Continental Congress approach creating military forces that could go toe-to-toe with the British military during the American War for Independence? Eric Jay Dolin joins us to answer part of that question by looking at the creation of ...
04.25.2023 356 Paul Peucker, The Moravian Church in North America In 1682, the first Assembly of Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties met in Chester, Pennsylvania, and adopted “the Great Law,” a humanitarian code that guaranteed the people of Pennsylvania liberty of conscience. “The Great Law” created an environment that not ...
04.11.2023 355 Misha Ewen, The Virginia Venture On April 10th, 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company of London a charter. Just over a year later, on May 14, 1607, this privately-funded, joint-stock company established the first, permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown, in ...
03.28.2023 354 John Wood Sweet, The Sewing Girl's Tale History tells us who we are and how we came to be who we are. It also allows us to look back and see how far we’ve come as people and societies. Of course, history also has the power to ...
03.14.2023 353 Brooke Bauer, Women and the Making of Catawba Identity How did Indigenous people adapt to and survive the onslaught of Indigenous warfare, European diseases, and population loss between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries? How did past generations of Indigenous women ensure their culture would live on from one generation ...
02.28.2023 352 Matthew Skic, James Forten and the Making of the United States People of African descent have made great contributions to the United States and its history. Think about all of the food, music, dance, medicine, farming and religious practices that people of African descent have contributed to American culture. Think about ...
02.14.2023 351 Nicole Maskiell, Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland African chattel slavery, the predominant type of slavery practiced in colonial North America and the early United States, did not represent one monolithic practice of slavery. Practices of slavery varied by region, labor systems, legal codes, and empire. Slavery also ...
01.31.2023 350 Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams Before the American Revolution became a war and a fight for independence, the Revolution was a movement and protest for more local control of government. So how did the American Revolution get started? Who worked to transform a series of ...
01.17.2023 349 Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Women Behind Benjamin Franklin There are a lot of books about Benjamin Franklin. They tell us about his youth and accomplishments in business, politics, and diplomacy. They tell us about his serious interest in electricity and science, and about his philanthropic work. But only ...
01.03.2023 348 Ricardo Herrera, Valley Forge On December 19, 1777, George Washington marched his Continental Army into its winter encampment at Valley Forge. In school we learned this was a hard, cold winter that saw the soldiers so ill-supplied they chewed on the leather of their ...
12.30.2022 Bonus: Craft in Early America Thank you for being a subscriber! How did early Americans create all of the the things they needed and wanted in life? We re-visit with Glenn Adamson to answer more of your questions about trade and crafts work in Early ...
12.20.2022 347 Jon Beebe, African and African American Music It’s impossible to overstate the importance of African and African American music to the United States’ musical traditions. Steven Lewis, a Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian, notes that “African American influences are so fundamental to American ...
12.13.2022 346 Billy Coleman, Music and Politics in the Early United States How did everyday Americans in the early United States use and enjoy music? How did they create and circulate new songs and musical lyrics? Our five-episode series about music in early America continues in this fourth episode about music and ...
12.06.2022 345 Glenda Goodman, Amateur Musicians in the Early United States Our study of music in Early America continues with this third episode in our five-episode series. Our last two episodes (Episode 343 and Episode 344) helped us better understand the musical landscapes of Native North America around 1492 and colonial ...
11.29.2022 344 David Hildebrand, Music in British North America Our 5-episode series about music in Early America continues with this second episode that seeks to answer your questions about music in Early America. David Hildebrand is a musicologist and an expert on early American music. His research specialty is ...
11.22.2022 343 Chad Hamill, Music and Song in Native North America What was music like in Early America? How did different early Americans—Native Americans, African Americans, and White Americans—integrate and use music in their daily lives? Your questions about music inspired this 5-episode series about music in Early America. Our exploration ...
11.08.2022 342 Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Native Nations Did you know that small Native American nations had the power to dictate the terms of French colonization in the Gulf South region? Elizabeth Ellis, an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe ...
10.25.2022 341 Mairi Cowan, Possession and Exorcism in New France Prepare for tricks, treats, and time travel! In honor of Halloween, we’re traveling back to the mid-seventeenth century to investigate a case of demonic possession and the practice of exorcism in New France. Mairi Cowan, an Associate Professor of History ...
10.11.2022 340: Nicholas Guyatt, Prisoners of War and the War of 1812 The War of 1812 is an under-known conflict in United States history. It’s not a war that many Americans think about or dwell upon. And it was not a war that the United States can claim it clearly won. Nicholas ...
09.27.2022 339 Mary Sarah Bilder, Women and the Constitutional Moment of 1787 Between May 25 and September 17, 1787, delegates from each of the United States’ thirteen states assembled in Philadelphia for an event we now call the Constitutional Convention. What do we know about the moment of the United States Constitution’s ...
09.13.2022 338 The Early History of the United States Senate On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution and submitted it to the states for ratification. In honor of Constitution Day, we join three historians from the Senate Historical Office to investigate Article ...
08.30.2022 337 Dael Norwood, Early America's Trade with China What made trade with China so important to the new United States that one of Americans’ first acts after securing the United States’ independence was to establish a trade with China and other Southeast Asian countries? Deal Norwood, an Assistant ...
08.16.2022 336 Vanessa Holden, Surviving the Southampton Rebellion What did it take to stage a successful slave uprising? Over the course of the early republic, we see a few violent slave uprisings in the United States. A particularly brutal rebellion took place in Louisiana in January 1811. Another ...
08.02.2022 335 Andrew Porwancher, The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton played important roles in the founding of the United States. He served in the Continental Army, helped frame the United States Constitution, and helped place the United States on a secure economic footing with his work as the ...
07.19.2022 334 Brandon Bayne, Missions & Mission Building in New Spain Spanish explorers and colonists visited, settled, and claimed territory in 42 of the United States’ 50 states. So what does the history of Early America look like from a Spanish point of view? Brandon Bayne, an Associate Professor of Religious ...
07.05.2022 333 Experiences of Revolution: Disruptions in Yorktown What was everyday life like during the American War for Independence? Our Fourth of July series continues with an investigation of how the American War for Independence impacted those who remained on the home front. As episode 332 explored how ...
06.28.2022 332 Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia What was everyday life like during the American War for Independence? In honor of the Fourth of July, we’ll investigate answers to this question by exploring the histories of occupied Philadelphia and Yorktown, and how civilians, those left on the ...
06.21.2022 331 The Discovery of the Williamsburg Bray School In a town as old as Williamsburg, Virginia, which was established in 1638, it’s often the case that historic buildings with interesting pasts stand unnoticed and in plain sight. Such was the case for the building that once housed Williamsburg’s ...
06.07.2022 330 Brad Jones, Loyalism in the British Atlantic World We’ll never know for certain how many Americans supported the American Revolution, remained loyal to the British Crown and Parliament, or tried to find a middle way as someone who was disaffected from either loyalty. But we can know about ...
05.24.2022 329 Mark Tabbert, Freemasonry in Early America This is an episode you’ve been waiting for! Mark Tabbert, the Director of Archives and Exhibits at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association and the author of Almanac of American Freemasonry and A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry, ...
05.10.2022 328 Warren Milteer Jr., Free People of Color in Early America We know from our explorations of early America that not all Americans were treated equally or enjoyed the freedoms and liberties other Americans enjoyed. Warren Milteer Jr., an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro ...
04.26.2022 327 David Schmidt, Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns How do we know what we know about Benjamin Franklin? We know historians, museum curators, and archivists rely on historical documents and objects to find and learn information about the past. But how does a documentary filmmaker present what they ...
04.12.2022 326 Maureen Connors Santelli, The Greek Revolution in Early America With Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy under attack, Americans have been wondering: Should our government be doing more than placing economic sanctions on Russia? Should I, as U.S. military veteran, travel to Ukraine and offer to fight in their army? What ...
03.29.2022 325 Woody Holton, Everyday People of the American Revolution What do we know about the American Revolution? Why is it important that we see the Revolution as a political event, a war, a time of social and economic reform, and as a time of violence and upheaval? Woody Holton, ...
03.15.2022 324 Andrea Mosterman, New Netherland and Slavery After Henry Hudson’s 1609-voyage along the river that now bears his name, Dutch traders began to visit and trade at the area they called New Netherland. In 1614, the Dutch established a trading post near present-day Albany, New York. In ...

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