Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of 17 children. When he was 17, he ran away from home to Philadelphia, where he began to teach himself. And the rest, as they say, is history. When he was in his 80s, he maintained that he was so happy with his life that he would like to live it again, exactly as it had transpired. This will be the first in a three-part series about the Founding Fathers.

Jane Cox is a professor emerita at Iowa State and has taught a variety of OLLI classes. A great-aunt of hers was taken as a baby by her father to watch the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln pass by. Jane began to see history as something that connects us all.