Book of Ages (55 page)

  
1.
  BF to Jane Franklin, January 6, 1727. Only one letter known to have been written by Franklin before this date survives. BF’s birthday is now rendered as January 17, but his baptismal record reads, “Benjamen Son of Josiah Frankling & Abiah his Wife born 6 Janry 1706” (“Record of Birth,”
PBF,
1:3). As the editors of the Franklin papers explain, “The clerk used the year dates of the New Style calendar (adopted by
Great Britain in 1752), recording the year of BF’s birth as a simple 1706 instead of the technically more correct 1705/6. He did not, however, adjust the days of the month but retained the Old Style January 6, not adding eleven days as the New Style calendar would require to make BF’s birthday January 17. The clerk thus followed a not uncommon practice.” See
PBF,
1:3n1. Even in his 1728 epitaph, “BF himself gives his birthday as January 6, 1706” (
PBF,
1:3). More important, from the vantage of understanding how Jane received this letter: she knew it was his birthday because her uncle, in his “Short Account” of the Franklin family history, had given it as January 6, 1706.

  
2.
  JFM to BF, May 29, 1786.

  
3.
  JFM to BF, April 22, 1786.

  
4.
  JFM to BF, July 27, 1779.

  
5.
  JFM to Jane Mecom Collas, April 1778.

  
6.
  BF to JFM, December 30, 1770.

  
7.
  Silence Dogood, “No. 6,”
New-England Courant,
June 11, 1722.

  
8.
  BF to Jane Franklin, Philadelphia, January 6, 1727.

  
9.
  For an astute reading of Franklin’s dealings with Keimer, and on the printing business more broadly, see James N. Green, “English Books and Printing in the Age of Franklin,” in
A History of the Book in America,
1:248–98.

10.
  BF,
Autobiography,
22–23.

11.
  Ibid., 24.

12.
  BF to Samuel Mather, London, July 7, 1773.

13.
  Lemay,
Life of BF,
1:253–54.

14.
  BF,
Autobiography,
24, 31, 33–34.

15.
  Ibid., 56.

16.
  BF,
Autobiography,
34. BF,
Dissertations on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain
(London, 1725).

17.
  BF, “Plain of Conduct,” 1726,
PBF,
1:99–100.

18.
  Thomas Hill,
The Young Secretary’s Guide,
6th ed. (Boston, 1727), 8. Letter-
writing manuals became popular in England beginning at the end of the seventeenth century; their influence in the colonies began a few decades later.

19.
  
The Young Man’s Companion,
3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Andrew Bradford, 1718), 160–61.

20.
  For a similar reading of the tea table, see Lemay,
Life of BF,
1:319.

21.
  Nor is there any record that she ever owned one. There wasn’t one in her father’s
house when she was living there when the estate was probated, in 1752. There wasn’t one in her house when her husband died, in 1765. There wasn’t one in her house when she died, in 1794. For more on spinning wheels and their symbolic weight, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich,
The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth
(New York: Knopf, 2001), especially 86–95; Norton,
Liberty’s Daughters,
15–20 (Norton mistakenly describes Franklin as giving Jane a spinning wheel as a wedding present); and Marla R. Miller,
The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006). Ulrich has argued for abandoning the spinning wheel as the icon of women’s history (
Good Wives,
34). And see also Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Wheels, Looms, and the Gender Division of Labor in Eighteenth-Century New England,”
William and Mary Quarterly
55 (January 1998): 3–38.

22.
  
Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston Containing the Boston Records From 1700 to 1728
(Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1883), 8:147. See also Rolla Milton Tryon,
Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640–1860: A Study in Industrial History
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1917), 86, and Gary B. Nash, “The Failure of Female Factory Labor in Colonial Boston,”
Labor History
20 (1979): 165–88. At a meeting of the selectmen on April 13, 1721, members voted “for Letting out” £300 for a Spinning School. See
A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston Containing the Records of Boston Selectmen, 1716 to 1736
(Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1885), 13:80. On Josiah Franklin supplying the
candles for the
almshouse, see Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah,” 38, 92.

23.
  Homespun Jack, “To the venerable Doctor Janus,”
New-England Courant,
January 18, 1725. And on a spinning factory operating in Boston in the 1750s, see Ulrich,
Age of Homespun,
chapter 4.

24.
  Edward Ward,
The City Madam, and the Country Maid; or, Opposite Characters of a Virtuous Housewifely Damsel, and a Mechanick’s Town-Bred Daughter
(London, 1702).

25.
  
Adam and Eve Stript of their Furbellows; or, The Fashionable Virtues and Vices of both SEXES expos’d to publick View
(London, 1714), 65. On my claim that BF clearly read this, compare “Raree-Show” (
Adam and Eve,
66), and “Country Joan” (
Adam and Eve,
70), to BF’s poem for Deborah, “Sing My Plain Country Joan,” 1742,
PBF,
2:352.

26.
  Anthony Afterwit,
Pennsylvania Gazette,
July 10, 1732;
PBF,
1:239–40. To this, James wrote a reply, in the voice of “Patience Teacraft”: “an honest Tradesman’s only Daughter,” who, inheriting a great deal of money from her father, marries a tradesman “something addicted to Drinking & Gaming.” He sells everything she owns. At last, she devises a plan: “I bought a Wheel of Fortune, a Snake-Board, a Back-Gammon Table, a Set of NinePins, and had a good Alley made in the Garden.” And then she buys him a tea table and a tea set and pours him so much tea that, eventually, he gives up gambling. Patience Teacraft appeared in the
Rhode-Island Gazette
but was reprinted in the
Pennsylvania Gazette,
June 7, 1733.

27.
  JFM to BF, July 27, 1779.

  
1.
  Van Doren (
Letters,
6) speculates that JFM began writing the Book of Ages only in 1762, but I am convinced she undertook it in 1731, the year of her son Edward’s birth, although it’s possible that the surviving “Book of Ages” is a copy made at a later time from an earlier and now lost manuscript. Quite exactly how to classify the Book of Ages is difficult. It is essentially a family register. But people kept all sorts of notebooks in the eighteenth century, a practice that has been the subject of considerable study. For a fascinating example, see Anthony Grafton, “The Republic of Letters in the American Colonies: Francis Daniel Pastorius Makes a Notebook,”
American Historical Review
117 (2012): 1–39.

  
2.
  
A very Useful Manual; or, The Young Mans Companion
(London: T. Snowden, 1681). On the history of these early copybooks and manuals, see Virginia Elsie Radatz Stewart, “The Intercourse of Letters: Familiar Correspondence and the Transformation of American Identity in the Eighteenth Century” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1997), chapter 1.

  
3.
  George Fischer,
The American Instructor; or, Young Man’s Best Companion
(Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1748), 27, 29, 28, 1, 30. On the significance and variety of hands used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Tamara Plakins Thornton,
Handwriting in America: A Cultural History
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), chapter 1, and Susan M. Stabile,
Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), especially chapter 2. Franklin’s shop included stationery supplies beginning in 1729 (Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
48). For the stationery supplies BF sold, see his advertisement in the
Pennsylvania Gazette,
May 20, 1742.

  
4.
  Ambrose Serle,
The Christian Parent; or, Short and Plain Discourses concerning God
(New York: Samuel Loudon, 1791), 96. The only other reference to a book of ages that I have seen is to an ancient record book from Ireland, which was discussed, in print, only in a scholarly context. See Geoffrey Keating,
The General History of Ireland
(London, 1723), xxi (“The particular Titles and Contents of many ancient Books are as follow:…
Reim Riogradh,
otherwise call’d the
Roll of the Kings,
the
Book of Ages
”). Keating’s remarks are referred to in James Parsons,
Remains of Japhet
(London, 1767), 160 (“The books of greatest authority, with Dr.
Keating
, are … The Book of
Provincialists,
or the
Roll of Kings;
the Book of
Ages;
an Account of the
People
who lived in the same Age …”).

  
5.
  “Dies Irae,” trans. Philip Schaff, in
Hours at Home: A Popular Monthly, of Instruction and Recreation,
ed. J. M. Sherwood, vol. 7 (New York: Charles Scribner, May to October 1868), 39.

  
6.
  Thomas Walter,
The Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained; or, An Introduction to the Art of Singing by Note
(Boston: J. Franklin, 1721). Curiously, Jane’s son Benjamin printed an edition of this same volume
in Boston in 1760. See Thomas Walter,
The Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained; or, An Introduction to the Art of Singing by Note
(Boston: Benjamin Mecom, 1760).

  
7.
  
New-England Courant,
February 24, 1724.

  
8.
  Wulf, “Bible, King, and Common Law.” Wulf writes of “genealogical literacy” and argues that “genealogical consciousness was a bedrock of British American culture.” See also Karin Wulf, “Ancestry as Social Practice in Eighteenth-Century New England: The Origins of Early Republic Genealogical Vogue,” Boston Area Early American Seminar, March 6, 2012, unpublished manuscript.

  
9.
  It was in the pages of his Bible that John Robison of Connecticut kept a “Book of Reckords.” It begins, “A. Dom. 1744 January the 22th Day which was the Time when I transcribed the Ages and Deaths of those of My family yt were born & Dead before this Time.” “John Robinson Book of Reckords 1746” transcript, Silliman Family Papers Box 49, Folder 29, Sterling Library, Yale University, as cited in Wulf, “Ancestry as a Social Practice.” Sometimes keeping records was a way to own people: slave owners needed to know their slaves’ ages in order to establish their market value. The Tucker family of Virginia kept, within the family Bible, a “Register of Negroes,” viz.:

Family records were so much more reliable than those of the town clerk or the parish book that they were admissible in court. See Shane Landrum, “The State’s ‘Big Family Bible,’ ” unpublished manuscript. And see Robert Gutman, “Birth and Death Registration in Massachusetts. I. The Colonial Background, 1639–1800,”
Millbank Memorial Fund Quarterly
36 (1958): 58–74.

10.
  Ross W. Beales Jr., “In Search of the Historical Child: Miniature Adulthood and Youth in Colonial New England,”
American Quarterly
27 (1975): 392. Daniel Scott Smith, “Parental Power and Marriage Patterns: An Analysis of Historical Trends in Hingham, Massachusetts,”
Journal of Marriage and the Family
35 (1973): 426, at Table 4; the numbers are for marriages between 1721 and 1780.

11.
  Elizabeth born March 2, 1678, married January 8, 1707, age 28; Hannah born May 25, 1683, year of first marriage unknown,
age at first marriage unknown (married for the second time on June 22, 1710, at the age of 27); Anne born January 5, 1687, married July 10, 1712, age 25; Mary born September 26, 1694, married April 3, 1716, age 21; Sarah born July 9, 1699, married May 23, 1722, age 22; Lydia born August 8, 1708, married 1731, age 22 or 23; average age at first marriage among sisters, excepting Hannah and Jane: 23.8 (if Lydia was 23) and 23.6 (if Lydia was 22). Samuel born May 16, 1681, married May 16, 1705, age 24; John born December 7, 1690, year of first marriage unknown, age at first marriage unknown; Peter born November 22, 1692, married September 2, 1714, age 21; James born February 4, 1697, married February 4, 1723, age 26; Benjamin born January 6, 1706, entered common law marriage September 1, 1730, age 24; average age at first marriage among brothers, excepting John: 23.75. For dates see “Descendants of Josiah Franklin,”
PBF,
1:lvi–lxii.

12.
  See, especially, Norton,
Liberty’s Daughters,
chapter 2.

13.
  JFM to BF, December 30, 1765.

14.
  
BF the Elder, “Since I came into New England,” commonplace book, volume 2, AAS.

15.
  
New England Weekly Journal,
March 27, 1727.

16.
  This stone was still visible in 1856, when
Thomas Bridgman reported that it stood “about four feet west of the Franklin monument” (erected in 1827), but it can no longer be seen. Thomas Bridgman,
The Pilgrims of Boston and Their Descendants … Also Inscriptions from the Monuments in the Granary Burial Ground
(New York: D. Appleton, 1856), 334. Bridgman reported that the wife of Jane and Benjamin’s cousin Samuel Franklin was buried in the same place in 1749; Bridgman transcribed the epitaph on Hannah Franklin’s tombstone (335).

17.
  BF the Elder joined the church on April 7, 1717, a few months before he wrote his family history. Jane’s brother
James Franklin had joined the church on July 7, 1717, exactly three months after Benjamin the Elder (
Manifesto Church,
97) and his wife, Ann Smith Franklin, joined on April 4, 1725 (
Manifesto Church,
107—if the “Ann Franklin” listed is James’s wife). Jane’s sister Sarah had been married at
Brattle Street, too (
Manifesto Church,
238), and two of James’s children, Abia and James Jr., had been baptized there (
Manifesto Church,
146, 148).

18.
  Jane told the story of the funeral sermon to Ezra Stiles in 1779. That is, she remembered, in 1779, the text of a sermon she’d heard in 1727. See Stiles,
Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles,
2:376.

19.
  “Edward Son of Duncan Maycom and Mary his Wife, Born 15 December 1704” is the entry in
A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing Boston Births from A.D. 1700 to A.D
.
1800
(Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, 1894), 30 (hereafter
Boston Births
). See also Van Doren,
Jane Mecom,
24.

20.
  “Mary Daughter of Dunkin and Mary Maycom … 5 April 1700” (
Boston Births,
3). “Hezekiah Son of Duncan Maicum and Mary his Wife, Born 10 October 1701” (9). “Ebenezar Son of Duncan Maycome and Mary his Wife … 4 September 1703” (22). “Eliza. daughter of Duncan Maycome and Mary his Wife … 13 October 1707” (53). “Rebecca daughter of Duncan Maycome and Mary his Wife, Born 23 November 1709” (63). “Ann daughter of Duncan Maycom and Mary his Wife, Born 27 September 1711” (77).

21.
  Edward Mecom’s obscurity was a running joke between
Carl Van Doren and his research assistant. She once wrote him, “If I found Edward Mecom’s name in a newspaper, the Rare Book Room staff would have to revive me with spirits of ammonia.” Jane Mecom Research Notebook, Carl Van Doren Papers, Princeton, Box 11, Folder 11. (Edward Mecom’s name appeared at least twice, in the
Boston Gazette,
but—working in an age before digital newspapers—Van Doren’s research assistant never found it.)

22.
  The hat and wig appear in an inventory of his estate, taken at his death in 1765. “An Inventory of the
Estate of Edward Mecom deceased,” Edward Mecom 13744 (October 25, 1765), Regist certif. 64, 546, Suffolk County Register, Mass. Arch.

23.
  JFM to CRG, Philadelphia, November 24, 1775. Jane meant this in jest: Caty had told her a secret, and Jane was absolving her for it. But it does display her sense of the vulnerability of wives.

24.
  Edward Mecom appears to have been admitted to membership in 1721 (
Manifesto Church,
98).

25.
  
A notation made in the church record book on September 10, 1739, while Colman was minister, reports that a “Committee appointed to consider of a Change of Version of the Psalms” had “met & applied to our good Brethren Mr Macom & Mr Johnson, & prevailed with “em to sit together & lead us in the Ordinance of Singing” (
Manifesto Church,
27–28).

26.
  “Abia Holbrook, Writing Master, and Edward Macom, purpose to open a singing School to instruct Children in the Rules of Psalmody, at 20 s. a Quarter, old Tenor; the first Quarter to be paid at Entrance, to begin Wednesday next … The utmost Care will be taken of the Children, of either Sex; and the Place appointed is the South Writing School in the Common.”
Boston Evening-Post,
June 25, 1744. And on this subject, see Allen P. Britton, “The How and Why of Teaching Singing Schools in Eighteenth-Century America,”
Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education
99 (1989): 23–41.

27.
  “Magistrates in all the New England colonies were obliged to refuse marriage to underage couples who could not provide evidence of [parental consent]” (Gloria L. Main,
Peoples of a Spacious Land: Families and Cultures in Colonial New England
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001], 72).

28.
  BF,
Poor Richard’s Almanack … 1734,
in
PBF,
1:354.

29.
  Quoted in Axtell,
School on a Hill,
57.

30.
  
Manifesto Church,
151. There is no evidence that Jane had been raped, though it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Tradition, and in some places the
law, held that a woman who had been raped could not get pregnant; conception, most people thought at the time, required female orgasm. If Jane Franklin had found herself pregnant after having been raped, she would have been very hesitant to accuse Edward Mecom of the crime. Her
pregnancy would have been taken as proof against the charge. In the words of a New Haven magistrate’s court, “No woman can be gotten with child without some knowledg, consent and delight in the acting thereof.” Charles J. Hoadly, ed.,
Records of the Colony or Jurisdiction of New Haven, From May, 1653, to the Union
(Hartford: Case, Lockwood, 1858), 123; case from October 18, 1654. Quoted in Main,
Peoples of a Spacious Land,
64.

31.
  The man who became Jane’s doctor recommended, after a miscarriage, that a woman not sleep with her husband for a twelvemonth: “not cohabit with sd Husband for a 12 Month Keep their beds wholey when first with Child till the time of her Miscarrying is over.” John Perkins, second medical notebook, AAS.

32.
  Edward carried the baby to Brattle Street to be baptized four days later. Josiah Mecom (listed as “Mecum”) was baptized on June 8, 1729, by Samuel Cooper (
Manifesto Church,
151). “Jane Mecom” does not appear in
The Manifesto Church
as a communicant, but a “Jane Masum” does, on January 7, 1728, the January after her marriage (
Manifesto Church,
107).

33.
  “Before the Birth of one of her Children” in Anne Bradstreet,
Several Poems, Compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning,
239.

34.
  Birth and death dates, and a family history, can be found in the handwritten notes in the blank pages of a copy of Ebenezer Turell,
The Life and Character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman
(Boston, 1749), inscribed by Samuel Turell Armstrong, and preserved at the MHS. Jane Colman married Ebenezer Turell at the Brattle Street
Church on August 11, 1726, and died on March 26, 1735. The only one of her children to survive her,
Samuel Turell, died on October 8, 1736.

35.
  Turell,
Memoir
(London, 1741), 58–59. Her father delivered a sermon at her funeral. Benjamin Colman,
Reliquiae Turellae, et Lachrymae Paternae. The Father’s Tears over his Daughter’s Remains
(Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1735).