Don't look for descendants of Benjamin Franklin with the last name "Franklin." That's because his line carries through his daughter, Sarah, who in 1767 married a man named Bache. Through the many generations that followed, numerous new names entered the picture.

That includes Pepper, surname of an eighth-generation relative who knows that learning of his famous ancestor can be as off-putting as it is surprising.

"The name is not something that we talk about too often," said Benjamin F. Pepper Jr., 52, a computer consultant who lives in Aurora with his wife and son, Benjamin F. Pepper III.

"As you might imagine it is intriguing to some and appears somewhat effete to others," he said. "Some people simply think you are making it up. Mostly it is an interesting conversation starter when someone you know well, and knows of the lineage, introduces you as a descendant."

Pepper has learned well about the peripatetic Mr. Franklin. "He was good at most of what he did, and, yes, we have all studied him in one way or another in school and informally within the family."

(Two other Franklin descendants live near Castle Rock, he said: Pepper's father's half sister, Tracy Marble, and her son, Ben Lydick.)

Pepper, who moved to Denver in 1972 to attend the University of Denver (he was born in Bethesda, Md.), said he felt the attribute he shared with Franklin was his love of math and science, though he wound up in art school after discovering that pre-med was not for him.

He admires Franklin for being "a scientist and diplomat, in that order. He signed the first treaty the United States entered into after we became independent. It was with Sweden, which is fun since my wife is Swedish."

In a line of work that prompts frequent travel, Pepper said a trip to France a decade ago prompted him to think about Ben Franklin.

"After my third or fourth trip to Paris, in 1996, on my morning run on the Champs Elysees, it suddenly occurred to me that I was running on a street where Franklin had probably ridden a horse or taken a carriage, or maybe even walked," Pepper said. "It didn't change my workday, but it was an interesting thought, nonetheless."

And one that lingered. While on the airplane back to the United States, Pepper said he realized "while it took me about six hours to get home, it took him three weeks."