Her name was Jane Franklin, she was born in 1712, and we never heard of her in history class. Now she is the subject of a beautiful new book that opens doors and windows into women's lives before and after men — their brothers, husbands, fathers — made the Republic live and breathe by taking up arms and writing grand words.

"Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin" was just published by Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard University. Jane was the youngest child in a large family in Puritan Boston. She was always close to her brother Benjamin, six years older. He grew up to be Ben Franklin, the extraordinary scholar, scientist and statesman and author of the first American "Autobiography." His brilliance is legend, and it is only because of him that his younger sister's ordinary life has come to light.

The two Franklin siblings saw each other as a spiritual second half, and this gives Lepore's readers insight into how many opportunities awaited an enterprising young man — not one born to wealth — compared with female kin who might have the same capability. Jane knew how to read, but did not spell so well. Her mind was bright, to be sure, but she was not as educated as Benjamin. She wrote the way she talked, informally, and Lepore brings her voice to life. Her married name was Jane Mecom, and as wife and mother she took on the same heavy domestic duties as her own mother.

Jane left behind a simple, 16-page book with portraits, a document of her family that gives Lepore a passport to the past. It gives an inkling of what Jane and others did every day in their private lives, while the men they knew led more public existences. Over the decades, more than one historian has fallen for Jane's charms while "working on" her brother's life.

"Her days were days of flesh: the little legs and little arms, the little hands, clutched around her neck, the softness," Lepore writes in a way that takes us back three or four centuries. She doesn't forget the animals either, pigs and horses. She recreates a lost world, as the best historians do, under the layers that we already know. Jane lived in same part of Boston as another Revolutionary figure: Paul Revere, the local silversmith.

The brother and sister exchanged letters avidly, ("Dear Sister Jenny") scraping shoulders in spirit, comparing books to read, even as the brother left Philadelphia to live across the Atlantic in London and Paris, representing the United States. He sent her fine clothes. Figuratively speaking, Benjamin might be snubbed by the King of England while Jane was doing the Monday washing. Their chatty letters gave them "comfort," in her word. Perhaps she enjoyed his marvelous life vicariously.

Women's lives may get lost in the cracks of the cathedral of history. They are seldom seen fully in the usual primary sources: political documents, letters, archives, newspapers, war annals and, until lately, biographies. Lepore's book is a personal history, yes, but also a haunting social history. Some lines still ring true: "In Boston at midcentury, the rich grew richer, and the poor grew poorer. Never before in New England had such inequality of wealth been known." The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the French say.

Women's lot in the 18th century was pretty fixed. Even with the American Revolution at the center of their lives, the Founding generation of men counted on no revolutions at home. As John Adams bluntly put it in a letter to his wife Abigail, "Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems."

Jane left her precious "Book of Ages" as a bequest to her grandson Josiah Flagg. Somehow it's survived being handed down until this day, from one library to another. Josiah, a New England town clerk, cherished the 16 pages and added records of his own life. In a sense, it remains a tantalizing, unfinished book of the early Republic.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.