Ax/Axe to grind

The grinding and sharpening of axes has gone on for thousands of years. The interest, however, is when was 'having an axe to grind' first used figuratively to mean having a personal stake or an ulterior motive in something or other? The figurative meaning of having an axe to grind has been wrongly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the American Constitution. In his autobiography, published in 1791, a year after his death, Franklin relates how as a boy he was tricked by a man carrying an axe. The man asked young Franklin to show him how the grinder worked. Franklin demonstrated by sharpening the man’s axe. The man then went on his way, happy that his axe had been sharpened free of charge. Franklin merely relates the story and draws no conclusion from it. Nor did lay any claim to a figurative meaning from this episode. People reading Franklin's story might well have deduced a figurative meaning, but the first known citation of the figurative usage was from Charles Miner, a US newspaper editor, who in a newspaper article in 1812 wrote, “When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, think I, that man has an ax to grind.” (The American spelling for axe is 'ax' without the 'e'.) Obviously, Miner’s readers knew what he was talking about, so the figurative meaning was alive and well by 1812, some twenty years after the appearance of Franklin’s autobiography. Certainly, the expression derives from Franklin’s story, but we cannot be sure he was the one who coined its figurative meaning.