Francis Folger Franklin died of smallpox in Philadelphia on November 21, 1736, just after his fourth birthday. Known in the family as Franky, he was the son of Benjamin Franklin and Deborah Read. He had not been inoculated. Franklin later explained that he had delayed the procedure while the boy recovered from another illness, and denied a rumor that inoculation itself had killed him. That distinction is essential: Francis caught smallpox naturally, and his father's regret concerned a preventive step postponed, not a fatal inoculation. The available account does not give a complete sequence of his symptoms or the treatment attempted during the final illness. He was buried in Christ Church Burial Ground, with an inscription recalling the affection he had inspired. Franklin's later autobiography used the loss when urging parents to consider inoculation, and his letters show that the memory remained painful decades afterward. The boy's death therefore has an unusually well-recorded emotional aftermath, even though the clinical details are sparse. His father's subsequent advocacy should not be used to invent a private bedside conversation or a certainty about what an earlier procedure would have achieved for this particular child.