Sitting aristocratically in his evergreen-colored vestments, the ruffles of his neck collar fanned across the red lapels of his jacket, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, a.k.a. Bill Meikle, Franklin’s impersonator, celebrated his 294th birthday last Friday in his old neighborhood, at Boston’s Immigration Museum.

As Emily Sloat Shaw, the museum educator, decorated a white sheet cake trimmed with baby blue icing with candles, the senior class of Riverview School on Cape Cod, a school for the mentally challenged, and patrons to the museum’s Dreams of Freedom exhibit surrounded Franklin and shouted birthday wishes.

Meikle was constantly entertaining the audience.

‘I hope you’re not going to put 294 candles on there,’ Meikle joked. ‘They would set off the sprinklers.’

When Shaw asked him if he knew the traditional birthday song, he replied, ‘I’m not familiar with that one, but I have had some cake in my time.’

At the song’s refrain, the 83-year-old puffed out an enormous breath of air, extinguishing all but two of the candles.

‘But see, I only have one lung,’ he said.

Always in character, the Franklin impersonator asked the East Sandwich students, who enjoyed free admission to the museum in honor of Franklin’s birthday, where they were from.

When one girl from Riverview replied, ‘Kansas City,’ Meikle said he’d never heard of it. When another said, ‘Cape Cod,’ he said, ‘Yes, I’ve heard of that place.’

Meikle said knew he would make a career out of impersonating Franklin 22 years ago when he saw the premiere of a film on the history of fire fighting in which he portrayed Franklin.

‘When I looked up and saw myself larger than life on that screen, I said, ‘Oh sucker, is that an annuity or is that an annuity,” Meikle reflected.

Meikle researched and studied the life, character and philosophy of Franklin for four years, and has since become so immersed in his role that he said it is difficult to distinguish where his voice ends and Franklin begins.

He has traveled from Paris to Brussels to San Francisco and to Oregon impersonating the man who George Washington once called ‘the Father of our Country’ in classrooms, fundraisers and special events.

The voice behind The Courant, one of Boston’s first newspapers, the real Ben Franklin lived and worked in the city until 1723, when he moved to Philadelphia, the city he is most often associated with.

‘Franklin is a Boston boy, though,’ Meikle stressed. ‘He was made here, educated here and imbued with the Puritan ethics that is worth and words. Boston made me and Philadelphia made me possible.’

Meikle emphasized Franklin’s importance to the city.

‘Did you know that, still to this day, Dr. Benjamin Franklin is the most famous born son of Boston?’ he asks. ‘It just taps my butt that the people of Boston say, ‘Ben who?’ He was made here. Without Boston, he would not be celebrated in Philadelphia with such fanfare.’

Meikle said he would be interesting in traveling back in time to Franklin’s day.

‘If I went back it would be more interesting to smell what it would be like,’ Meikle replied. ‘Everything would smell.