Book of Ages (60 page)

46.
  
William Franklin knew this as well, and he wrote to his father, in September, that rioters in Boston had “plundered the Effects of several even of those who were against the Stamp Act, particularly Mr. Hutchenson.” WF to BF, Burlington, September 7, 1765.

47.
  BF to JFM, March 1, 1766. And see also Thomas Hutchinson to BF, January 1, 1766.

48.
  JFM to BF, December 30, 1765.

49.
  JFM to BF, June 25, 1782.

50.
  JFM to BF, April 2, 1789.

  
1.
  JFM to DRF, February 27, 1766.

  
2.
  JFM to BF, December 30, 1765.

  
3.
  JFM to BF, November 8, 1766. Van Doren tried to figure out which six but did not succeed (see the page on the Massachusetts Assembly in Van Doren’s Jane Mecom notebook). Nor have I.

  
4.
  On the election, see
Massachusetts Gazette Extraordinary,
May 29, 1766.

  
5.
  “The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, before an August Assembly, relating to the Repeal of the Stamp Act, &c.” (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1766). “Examination of Dr. Bejamin Franklin,”
Connecticut Gazette,
September 27, 1766.

  
6.
  On why the colonists objected to the Stamp Act but not to the Post Act, see Stewart, “Intercourse of Letters,” 89–90.

  
7.
  “The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin” (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1766), 12, 23.

  
8.
  JFM to DRF, February 27, 1766.

  
9.
  DRF to BF, Philadelphia, [October 13–18?], 1767. See “State of the Accot: between Doctor B Franklin and Jona: Williams Senr: as it should properly stand,” [October 1763],
PBF,
10:356. At the time, Jane was also receiving financial support from William Franklin, who sent her food: “six Barrils of flower,” she told her brother, “which was a grat help to me & his notice of me a grat satisfaction.” JFM to BF, November 8, 1766.

10.
  JFM to BF, December 30, 1765. On
widows as shopkeepers (and innkeepers), see Norton,
Liberty’s Daughters,
142–51.

11.
  JFM to BF, November 8, 1766.

12.
  “The Prologue,” in Bradstreet,
Several Poems Compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning,
4.

13.
  BF to JFM, March 1, 1766.

14.
  JFM to BF, November 8, 1766. For Stevenson’s account with Jane, see “Doctr Benjamin Franklin to Margt Stevenson Dr for Sundries Purchased for and sent to Mrs. Jane Mecom of Boston,” 1765–71, in
PBF,
12:324–26.

15.
  BF to JFM, March 2, 1767.

16.
  JFM to Margaret Stevenson, Boston, May 9, 1767.

17.
  
“To be Sold by Jane Mecom,”
Boston Evening-Post,
November 16, 1767.

18.
  BF to JFM, December 24, 1767.

19.
  JFM to BF, December 1, 1767.

20.
  
Connecticut Gazette,
September 27, 1766. Franklin printed it on the title page of Richard Jackson,
An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania
(Philadelphia, 1759). The attribution of the motto to Franklin, which is now generally accepted, appears to be Mecom’s. Mecom, at the time, was hardly thriving. “I can’t get one Penny of Mecom and begin to fear, I never shall,” James Parker, Mecom’s chief creditor, wrote to Franklin from New York, on June 11, 1766.

21.
  JFM to BF, November 8, 1766.

22.
  JFM to BF, December 1, 1767. Emphasis mine, to call out the echo of BF.

  
1.
  J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer
(London, 1782), 51, 201.

  
2.
  “Kezia the daughter of Keziah Coffin at one time boarded at Jane Mecom’s, and went to school in Boston.” William Folger to Jared Sparks, 1838, “Papers sent to me by William C. Folger, of
Nantucket. Relating to Franklin,” in “Papers relating chiefly to Franklin. Used in writing his Life, 1839,” Sparks Papers, MS Sparks 19. Keziah Folger Coffin’s daughter Keziah Coffin, born in 1723, married in 1777. Franklin corresponded with Keziah Folger Coffin but does not appear to have visited Nantucket, at least since his childhood, if ever. He had never met Keziah’s husband or daughter. In 1765, in a letter to Keziah Folger Coffin, written possibly at Jane’s instigation, he asked, “Remember me kindly to your Husband and Daughter, Tho’ I am unknown to them.” BF to Keziah Folger Coffin, London, August 29, 1765.

  
3.
  Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, Boston, October 19, 1767, BF Papers, APS.

  
4.
  JFM to BF, December 1, 1767.

  
5.
  Letter extract, JFM to BF, [October 23, 1767].

  
6.
  JFM to BF, December 1, 1767.

  
7.
  BF to JFM, December 24, 1767.

  
8.
  JFM to BF, August 25, 1786.

  
9.
  BF to JFM, November 7[–9], 1770. BF to JFM, December 30, 1770. BF to JFM, November 7[–9], 1770. BF to JFM, December 30, 1770.

10.
  BF to JFM, July 17, 1771.

11.
  See especially Katherine Stebbins McCaffrey, “Reading Glasses: Spectacles in the Age of Franklin,” PhD diss., Boston University, 2007.

12.
  In 1764, when a fire destroyed all of Harvard’s scientific apparatus, Franklin purchased replacements, shipping from London the best telescopes and magnifying glasses. On the fire, see
PBF,
11:255n6. On BF agreeing to replace the scientific instruments, see BF to John Winthrop, Philadelphia, July 10, 1764.

13.
  BF to JFM, September 16, 1758.

14.
  BF to JFM, July 17, 1771. In a letter now lost, she replied that she was tempted to use lenses that made her vision better, whereupon Franklin warned her that this would weaken her eyes: “But People in chusing should only aim at remedying the Defect.
The Glasses that enable them to see
as well,
at the
same Distance
they used to hold their Book or Work, while their Eyes were good, are those they should chuse, not such as make them see
better,
for such contribute to hasten the Time when still older Glasses will become necessary.” BF to JFM, January 13, 1772.

15.
  BF, “Causes of the American Discontents before 1768” or “To the Printer of the
London Chronicle,
” January 5–7, 1768, in
PBF,
15:13, 9, 12–13.

16.
  WF to Lord Hillsborough, November 23, 1768, in
Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey, 1767–1776
(Newark, 1886), 10:64–96.

17.
  JFM to BF, November 7, 1768.

18.
  Richard Archer,
As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), xvi.

19.
  
Boston Under Military Rule, 1768–1769, as revealed in A Journal of the Times,
compiled by Oliver Morton Dickerson (New York: Da Capo, 1970). John Adams diary entry for September 3, 1769,
The Works of John Adams
(Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1850; repr., New York: AMS, 1971), 2:219.

20.
  JFM to BF, November 7, 1768. Jane had also written to him about a religious controversy involving the possibility of Anglican bishops residing in America.

21.
  BF to JFM, February 23, 1769. About the religious controversy, he was less tolerant: “But your Squabbles about a Bishop I wish to see speedily ended. They seem to be unnecessary at present, as the Design of sending one is dropt.”

22.
  BF to JFM, September 20, 1768.

23.
  BF to JFM, April 27, 1769.

24.
  JFM to BF, November 7, 1768.

  
1.
  She had also just been visited by a friend of her brother’s, the stamp distributor
John Hughes, who reported, in a letter to Deborah Franklin, that he was overcome with feeling upon making Jane’s acquaintance: “It was not in my power to Refrain taking the Sister of my Good friend in my Arms & Saluting her.” (He thought he might have offended her but confessed that, “was I to meet with another Sister of Dr. Franklin,” he would kiss her as well.) John Hughes to DRF, Philadelphia, September 19, 1769.

  
2.
  JFM to DRF, September 14, 1769.

  
3.
  WF to BF, ca. January 2, 1769. Jane reported her son’s visit differently: “My son John & wife are Hear & send there Duty,” she wrote to Franklin on November 7, 1768.

  
4.
  Mecom had printed his
Connecticut Gazette
until February 1768; then it had folded, and he and his wife moved to Philadelphia. Jane had, as always, reason to be worried about him. “I muste tell thee our Nevfew B Mecom has bin hear 5 or 6 dayes he went a way yesterday,” DRF wrote to her husband in January 1768. “I did not know his buisnes but he semed verey hapey and semed to think he had verey graite prospecktes before him.” DRF to BF, Philadelphia, January 21–22, 1768.

  
5.
  DRF to BF, Philadelphia, May 20–23, 1768.

  
6.
  BF to DRF, London, December 21, 1768–January 26, 1769.

  
7.
  WF to BF, [ca. January 2, 1769]. In the same letter, William proposed that his
father, when he returned to America, might bring with him William’s bastard son, Temple: “He might then take his proper Name, and be introduc’d as the Son of a poor Relation, for whom I stood God Father and intended to bring up as my own.”

  
8.
  Ibid.

  
9.
  Franklin would later refuse to help another nephew,
Josiah Davenport, who wanted Franklin to appoint him to the post office in Philadelphia, telling him, “I have been hurt too much by endeavouring to help Cousin Ben Mecom.” BF to Josiah Davenport, London, February 14, 1773. BF continued: “I have no Opinion of the Punctuality of Cousins. They are apt to take Liberties with Relations they would not take with others, from a Confidence that a Relation will not sue them … Don’t take this unkind.”

10.
  Benjamin Mecom, notice of collection of debt,
Connecticut Journal,
August 18, 1769.

11.
  The auction is recounted in several letters from James Parker to BF, New York, February 2, February 20, April 23[–24], and May 10, 1770. In the May 10 letter, Parker reported, “The Amount of the Whole of the Sales of B. Mecom’s Books came to £175 this Money.”

12.
  I am uncertain when DRF traveled to Boston, but in 1766 Jane wrote to
Deborah, speaking of a cousin, “I Remember
she was hear when you were,
& so was cousen Kezia Coffin, she has been in town this fall & Desiered me to Remember Her to you when I wrot.” JFM to DRF, November 24, 1766. Emphasis mine.

13.
  JFM to DRF, September 14, 1769.

14.
  Jane met Sarah Franklin Bache and
Richard Bache on August 14, 1768, when the two visited Boston and ate a meal with Jane in her home. See editorial comment, Van Doren,
Letters,
106. Jane wrote Deborah on September 26 expressing her high opinion of Richard Bache, and Deborah forwarded that letter to Franklin. On February 23, 1769, Franklin wrote Jane, “I am glad you approve the Choice they have made.” BF to JFM, February 23, 1769.

15.
  BF to JFM, February 23, 1769.

16.
  Jane wrote Deborah in the summer after she returned to Boston, “Your King Bird I Long to see I have watched Every child to find some Resemblanc but have seen but won & that was only in Good Natuer & Sweet Smell.” JFM to DRF, [August?] 1770. BF to JFM, January 13, 1772: “All who have seen my Grandson, agree with you in their Accounts of his being an uncommonly fine Boy.” King Bird reminded Franklin of the son he’d lost. Accounts of
Benjamin Franklin Bache, says Franklin, “often afresh to my Mind the Idea of my Son Franky, tho’ now dead 36 Years.”

17.
  DRF to BF, Philadelphia, December 13, 1769.

18.
  BF to JFM, March 15, 1770.

19.
  BF to JFM, November 7–9, 1770.

20.
  “I am very happy that a good Understanding continues between you and the Philadelphia Folks,” Franklin wrote to her. “Our Father, who was a very wise man, us’d to say, nothing was more common than for those who lov’d one another at a distance, to find many Causes of Dislike when they came together; and therefore he did not approve of Visits to Relations in distant Places, which could not well be short enough for them to part good Friends.” BF to JFM, July 17, 1771.

21.
  JFM to DRF, [August?] 1770.

22.
  
The date of John Mecom’s death is recorded in a notice placed by his widow, Catherine Oakey Mecom, concerning the claims of creditors on his estate: “This is to give Notice to the Creditors of John Mecom,” advertisement,
New-York Gazette,
October 8, 1770.

23.
  JFM to DRF, [August?] 1770.

24.
  
A Short Narrative of the horrid Massacre in Boston
(Boston: Edes and Gill, 1770).

25.
  JFM to DRF, [August?] 1770.

26.
  BF to JFM, November 7, 1770.

27.
  JFM to BF, September 22, 1770.

28.
  Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, Boston, August 27, 1770. Jane wrote Deborah from Boston in August 1770 (or thereabouts), apologizing for not yet having responded to Deborah’s letter of June 25 and explaining that she “was in a Hurry a mooving” and “Did not take the … to Ansur yr Leter as I ought to have Done.” It is unclear what she meant by “mooving,” unless she meant that she was moving back into her house after her time away in Philadelphia. It is possible, though, that she moved into another house. It is, however, certain that Jane did not at this point move into the Douse house in the North End, because Williams was still using the rent on that house to pay for Jane’s support and, when he could not get the rent, simply advancing Jane the cash, without telling her that no rent was coming in. “I hope you have before this time got another Tenant for the House, and at the former Rent,” Franklin wrote to Williams in his letter of March 5, 1771. “However, I would have you go on advancing to my Sister the Amount of it; as I am persuaded she cannot well do without it. She has indeed been very unfortunate in her Children.” On Jonathan Williams Jr. as BF’s clerk in London, see BF to Jonathan Williams Sr., London, March 5, 1771. Jane played a role in coaxing Franklin to take on Josiah and Jonathan Williams Jr. in London. See BF to JFM, July 17, 1771: “I have never seen any young Men from America that acquir’d by their Behaviour here more general Esteem than those you recommended to me.”

29.
  JFM to DRF, [before August 1770?]. She asked, too, if Deborah could send along “a Pare of Buter Boats of chineis” Deborah had wanted to give to her as a
gift: “I should be very fond of them.” JFM to DRF, September 2, 1771.

30.
  JFM to DRF, [before August 1770?].

31.
  JFM to DRF, [August?] 1770. Jane was certainly back in Boston by August. “Aunt Mecom is well settled,” Jonathan Williams Sr. reported to Franklin on August 27, 1770. And she was probably back in Boston by June. She wrote Deborah from Boston in August 1770 or thereabouts, “I Recved your kind Leter of June 25 some time ago …”

32.
  BF to JFM, July 17, 1771. For the chart, see
PBF,
18:187.

33.
  Franklin lost the recipe she sent him sometime before January 13, 1772. He told her exactly this in a letter on October 27, 1785, and asked her to resend it. She sent it again on January 6, 1786. In the same October letter, Franklin asked more of Jane: to make “a Parcel for me of 40 or 50 pounds weight, which I want for Presents to Friends in France who very much admir’d it.” And he was specific about what he wanted: “I wish it to be of the greenish Sort that is close and solid and hard like the Specimen I send; and not that which is white and curdled and crumbly.”

34.
  JFM to BF, May 29, 1786.

35.
  
BF to JFM, January 13, 1772.

36.
  BF,
Autobiography,
1.

  
1.
  Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, July 6, 1794, in
Adams Family Correspondence,
ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 5:376.

  
2.
  An account of the fire can be found in the
New-York Journal,
June 6, 1771.

  
3.
  
Essex Gazette,
September 10, 1771.

  
4.
  In January 1772, Wright was back in New York, about to sail for London; a newspaper reported that among the passengers on the packet called the
Mercury
“is the ingenious Mrs. Wright, whose Skill in taking Likenesses, expressing the Passions, and many curious Devices in
Wax-Work, has deservedly recommended her to public Notice, especially among Persons of Distinction, from many of whom we hear she carries Letters to their Friends in England.” She would make her way in London by delivering letters to friends of Americans of distinction.
New-York Journal,
January 30, 1772.

  
5.
  BF to JFM, March 30, 1772. For more on Wright, see Charles Coleman Sellers,
Patience Wright: American Artist and Spy in George III’s London
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1976), and Wendy Bellion, “Patience Wright’s Transatlantic Bodies,” in
Shaping the Body Politic: Art and Political Formation in Early America
, ed. Maurie D. McInnis and Louis P. Nelson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 15–46.

  
6.
  BF to JFM, April 13, 1772.

  
7.
  
Massachusetts Gazette,
November 12, 1772. She sent her wax sculpture of Franklin to Philadelphia, a
gift to the APS.
Boston News-Letter,
February 25, 1773. See also Sellers,
Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture,
84–95, 426–29. Sellers demonstrates that Wright made at least four wax figures of Franklin: a life-size bust (1772), a complete figure whose bust is a replica of the 1772 bust (1772), an undated replica of the 1772 bust, and a head (1781). None of these waxworks survive.

  
8.
  Samuel Cooper to BF, Boston, January 1, 1771.

  
9.
  On the Brattle Street Church’s move, see Akers,
Divine Politician,
128.

10.
  BF to Samuel Cooper, London, February 5, 1771.

11.
  Samuel Cooper to BF, Boston, July 10, 1771.

12.
  The books were carried by
Jonathan Williams Jr.’s brother, Josiah, who had stayed with Franklin in London but had grown sick. “I received per him only three 2d Volumes of Doctr. Priestly Work, when the Setts Arive compleat, I will sell them for the most I can, and pay the whole Money to Aunt Mecom, who is very well, but I believe will not have Time to write by this Oppertunity.” Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Boston, May 29, 1772. It seems that Jonathan Williams Jr. was back in Boston by September 1771. See BF to Jonathan Williams Jr., London, January 13, 1772.

13.
  Jonathan Williams Jr. wrote to BF, in the letter confirming receipt of the books, “I have but just Time to acknowledge the Receipt of yours per my Brother, whose Arival we had been long wishing for, but our pleasure was greatly damped by seeing him in such a state of Health; he has not been out since he first entered the House
and is at present very low, we are all fearfull he is consuming fast.” Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Boston, May 29, 1772.

14.
  “My Sister, to whom I have not now time to write, acquainted me in her last Letter, that there was some Expectation her Daughter would soon be married with her Consent,” Franklin wrote Williams. “If that should take Place, my Request is, that you would lay out the Sum of fifty Pounds, lawful Money, in Bedding or such other Furniture as my Sister shall think proper, to be given the new-married Couple towards Housekeeping, with my best Wishes: And charge that Sum to my Account.” BF to Jonathan Williams Sr., London, November 3, 1772.

15.
  Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Boston, October 13, 1772.

16.
  Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, Boston, August 27, 1770.

17.
  BF to Thomas Cushing, London, December 2, 1772.

18.
  Cushing confirmed receipt of the letters in a letter to BF from Boston on March 24, 1773.

19.
  Francis S. Drake,
Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents
(Boston: A. O. Crane, 1884), ix.

20.
  BF to Thomas Cushing, London, March 9, 1773.

21.
  BF to JFM, March 9, 1773, and see also editorial comment, Van Doren,
Letters,
138. Hall owed Franklin £152 1s. 6d., or £202 15s. 4d. “lawful money.”

22.
  BF to JFM, July 7, 1773. See also Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, Boston, February 15, 1773.

23.
  BF to JFM, November 1, 1773.

24.
  Bailyn,
Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson,
236–40.

25.
  She also seems to have been unwell that year. “I Saw your Sizter Mecom a few Days ago who was better than She had been Some time.” Samuel Franklin Jr. to BF, Boston, December 17, 1773. In this same letter, Samuel Franklin Jr. reports on the dumping of the tea into the harbor, concluding, “Such Sir is the Zeal of the Body of this people against Tea that Comes with a Duty.” Samuel Franklin Jr. was the grandson of Benjamin Franklin the Elder. He was a cutler in Boston. For genealogy, see
PBF,
1:lii.

26.
  BF to Jonathan Williams Sr., London, July 7, 1773. The Williams family had more ties to the Wheatleys. Williams had had a falling-out with John and
Susannah Wheatley, who owned Phillis. “The Black Poetess master and mistress prevaild on me to mention her in my Letter but as its turnd out I am Sorry I Did,” Williams wrote Franklin. (Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, Boston, October 17, 1773.)

27.
  Here, Franklin echoed a poem their grandfather had written from his hog shed of a prison on
Nantucket, more than a hundred years before. Franklin, in recounting the first part of the story of his life, said he’d been able to recall only the last six lines of
Peter Folger’s “Looking-Glass for the Times.” (See BF,
Autobiography,
5.) Maybe Jane had since sent him a copy, because in this letter from 1773—in which he described his own looking glass—he echoed other verses: “Tis true, there are some times indeed/of Silence to the Meek.” But, sometimes, “There is a time to speak.”

28.
  BF to JFM, November 1, 1773.

29.
  “I Bilive She in futer Will Supply herself with every sort of Good from our Desprate
Merchants on better Terms then Can be Imported from England,” Williams told Franklin. Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, Boston, October 17, 1773.

30.
  The dumping of the
tea wasn’t referred to as a “tea party” until the 1830s. See Alfred F. Young,
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
(Boston: Beacon, 1999).

31.
  BF, “To the Massachusets House of Representatives,” July 7, 1773,
PBF,
20:282.

32.
  BF to JFM, February 17, 1774.

33.
  John Morgan to Isaac Jamieux, November 24, 1773, in
Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739–1776
(Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914), 210.

34.
  BF to JFM, July 28, 1774.

35.
  BF to JFM, September 26, 1774.

36.
  Jane Mecom married
Peter Collas on March 23, 1773, at the
Brattle Street Church.
Manifesto Church,
254.

37.
  JFM to BF, November 3–21, 1774. JFM to BF, December 5–15, 1774.

38.
  
Works of Adams,
2:367.

39.
  JFM to BF, November 3–21, 1774.

40.
  
Wright’s
espionage is detailed in Sellers,
Patience Wright,
chapter 6. See also Rachel Wells to BF, December 16, 1785, in which Wells, Wright’s sister, writes, “It has bin often Asked me and others of our older members if aney thing has bin don for Mrs. Wright Mr. Pain has bin Considrd why not Mrs. Wright. Mr. Hancock and others of our oldest members allways alowe that her intiligence was the best we Recivd them by the hand of her sister Wells who found them in the wax heads She then Sent to her.”