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Measuring Franklin's Impact

The statesman and inventor came to Long Island, but did he set mile markers himself?

By Molly McCarthy | Staff Writer

Ben Franklin was a man of great invention. And he prided himself in making things easier.

Bifocals were hatched out of his near-sightedness. The lightning rod out of his fascination for electricity. A primitive odometer out of his need to measure early postal routes.

So it's possible that the author of ``Poor Richard's Almanack'' was the man responsible for a set of 30 stone mile markers laid in the mid-1700s along the King's Highway on the road from Riverhead to Orient. Of 30 milestones, 21 still line the roadway, known today as Route 25.

In a 1991 pamphlet, ``Benjamin Franklin's North Fork Milestones,'' the late Robert P. Long, a local history buff from Southold, argued that Franklin, appointed postmaster general in 1753, personally set out the milestones in 1755 as he surveyed dozens of new postal routes. Long described Franklin in ``high hat, ruffled shirt, [and] double-breasted cutaway coat,'' sitting in a carriage equipped with the crude odometer of his own invention.

A small bell rang as the carriage reached each new mile, and Franklin instructed the laborers to drive the marker into the ground, according to Long's account. The markers, resembling worn tombstones, were etched with the distance to the Suffolk Court House, as Riverhead was called in those days. The scheme enabled local postmasters to calculate postal rates.

It's easy to imagine the great inventor coming up with such a plan. But in spite of Long's assertions, there's little proof that Franklin himself oversaw the installation of the milestones.

``I don't think there's anything that says Ben Franklin's tail was fastened to a seat in a wagon that took this route and laid these stones,'' said Ralph Williams, who preserved milestone 28, which sits in front of his Orient home. ``It's all a bit inferential.''

There are various sightings of Franklin in pre-revolutionary Long Island. And some of them are confusing. Augustus Griffin, a prominent Southold resident and prolific diarist, wrote in his journal in 1857 that Franklin visited Southold in 1755 on his way to visit his mother in Boston. The only problem here is that Franklin's mother died in 1752.

The journal entry does mention Franklin's odd new invention, but says nothing about mile markers. The carriage ``was so contrived, with clock work or machinery of peculiar make, that a bell would be struck at the termination of every twenty rods,'' Griffin wrote.

Franklin spent the night at the inn of Samuel Griffin, Augustus' grandfather, who took him across the Sound the next morning to New London. So, on that particular trip, Franklin did not even make it to the end of the North Fork.

Long Island was a common route to New England from New York City and Philadelphia, so it is not surprising that Franklin, like other prominent gentlemen of his day, would have been spotted at local inns and taverns. In fact, a letter, dated Oct. 25, 1750, from Franklin to a colleague named Jared Eliot, mentions an earlier trip Franklin took through Long Island. Franklin asked Eliot to find out about a type of fence he saw during his travels. Franklin wrote:

I request you to procure for me a particular account of the manner of making a new kind of fence we saw at Southold, on Long Island, which consists of a bank and hedge. I would know every particular relating to this matter, as the best thickness, height, and slope of the bank; the manner of erecting it, the best time for the work, the best way of planting the hedge, the price of the work to laborers per rod or perch, and whatever may be of use for our information here, who begin in many places to be at a loss for wood to make fences.

Franklin's 32 volumes of collected writings make no mention of the mile markers or of a 1755 visit to Southold. Franklin spent much of that year in Philadelphia, traveling in January and February through southern New England, New York and New Jersey.

However, Franklin did take several months in 1763 to inspect post offices throughout New York and New England, so he could have simply laid the markers later than was originally thought.

Southold Town Historian Antonia Booth subscribes to the theory that Franklin himself left the unassuming stone legacies, citing the Eliot letter and Griffin journal as proof.

Others, while enchanted by the tale, believe Franklin probably had better things to do.

``Ben Franklin was a very efficient man, and I can't really see the efficiency of doing it himself,'' said Williams. ``I can't imagine he had the time. I prefer to think of him worrying about matters of state.''