Benjamin Franklin Bache was born in Philadelphia on August 12, 1769, the eldest son of Richard Bache and Sarah Franklin Bache and the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. Called Benny, he grew up in Franklin’s Market Street household amid printing, correspondence, and political visitors. Benjamin Franklin first met the boy in 1774, after returning from a long residence in Britain, and soon took an unusually direct role in shaping his education.

In 1776, when Franklin sailed to France as an American commissioner, seven-year-old Benny accompanied him. The separation from his parents lasted far longer than the family initially expected. At Passy outside Paris, he attended Le Coeur’s boarding school, studied French, and encountered the cosmopolitan world surrounding Franklin’s diplomatic mission. He met leading intellectual and political figures and became more fluent in French than English.

Franklin wanted his grandson educated in a Protestant republic, so in 1779 he sent him to Geneva. There Bache studied Latin, Greek, French, history, and other classical subjects under strict discipline. His diary records heavy schoolwork, loneliness, shyness, and the emotional cost of separation from his parents and frequent absence of his grandfather. He nevertheless won recognition for translation and acquired the republican and Enlightenment education Franklin intended.

Returning to Paris in 1783, Bache apprenticed in printing and type-founding, including work associated with the celebrated printer François-Ambroise Didot. He learned composition, presswork, type, paper, and the technical standards of refined European printing. Franklin and Bache returned to Philadelphia in 1785. Benny then attended the University of the State of Pennsylvania, completing his degree in 1787 with advanced standing based on his European studies. He worked in Franklin’s shop and began publishing educational and literary pieces. After his grandfather’s death in 1790, Bache began his newspaper career.