All 5 Uses of

founder

in

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

I was acquainted with one of its founders, Michael Welfare, soon after it appear'd.†
(definition 1) *

Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confin'd by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive farther improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from."†
(definition 1)

And, when at length the embargo was taken off, by neglecting to send notice of it to Charlestown, the Carolina fleet was detain'd near three months longer, whereby their bottoms were so much damaged by the worm that a great part of them foundered in their passage home.†
(definition 2) *

Uses with a very rare meaning:

Our printing-house often wanted sorts, and there was no letter-founder in America; I had seen types cast at James's in London, but without much attention to the manner; however, I now contrived a mould, made use of the letters we had as puncheons, struck the matrices in lead, And thus supply'd in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies.†
(definition 3)

[9] [9] In the Middle Ages, Franklin, if such a phenomenon as Franklin were possible in the Middle Ages, would probably have been the founder of a monastic order.†
(definition 3) *

Definitions:

(1) (founder as in: a founder of the company)
someone who establishes or starts something

(3) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
A less common meaning refers to someone who manufactures things made from cast metal.