Benjamin Franklin Writes from Philadelphia, July 1776, Possibly The Only Such Letter in Private Hands

We found record of no other letters of Franklin from that fateful month having reached the market

 

A touching letter showing Franklin taking care of his family

In June of 1776, a proposal to declare the colonies an independent nation was submitted to the Second Continental Congress. It appointed a committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. The committee consisted of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger  Sherman. Thomas Jefferson was the primary author while Franklin was foremost  in suggesting changes and improvements. The Congress approved American independence on July 2, 1776 and the Declaration of Independence was agreed to on July 4, 1776. Four days later, on July 8, it was read publicly in the  State House Yard in Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell was rung. On August 2, the Declaration of Independence was signed by all the delegates, Franklin very much included.

Franklin was very fond of his widowed younger sister, Jane Mecum. During the Revolution, Jane moved to Rhode Island and stayed with Franklin’s friends, Catherine Ray Greene and her husband William. From there she went to the Philadelphia home of Franklin’s daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and Richard Bache. She lived there and in nearby Burlington, New Jersey for the duration of the war. Throughout her life she corresponded with Franklin, keeping him informed of public opinion in America while he was abroad. Her husband had left her nothing, and she was usually short of money. Her son Benjamin was named after her noted brother, and uncle Benjamin Franklin set him up as a printer in 1752. Benjamin Mecum later quarreled with his uncle and bought the press from him, moving it to Boston in 1757 and from there to several other colonial cities. He became the first American to attempt (though unsuccessfully) to make type by the technique of stereotyping. Benjamin went insane, (as had his brother Peter), and by 1776 had to be institutionalized. The family chose Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital, the oldest hospital in the nation, which Franklin had raised money to help found in 1751 and where he had served as its second president. Franklin paid out of his own pocket for his nephew’s care.

Soon after the vote for independence, Franklin received a letter from leading town officials of Burlington, William Smith and John Lawrence (who had been Mayor), that Benjamin Mecum had escaped from Pennsylvania Hospital and gone to Burlington, where he had lived for a time and where his mother was. The town’s residents appealed to Franklin for help in a letter to him of July 19, saying, “At the Request of Mrs. Mecum (who has been an Inhabitant of this city for some time past and behav’d with prudence and Industry,) we take the liberty to Inform you that her husband’s [son’s] conduct is such, as to render her situation disagreeable, and at times very dangerous he being often depriv’d of his reason, and likely to become very troublesome to the inhabitants. If a place in the Hospital of Philada. can be procured or any other way of confining which may be thought more eligable she begs your assistance…”

Franklin responded promptly to this family crisis. Autograph Letter Signed, Philadelphia, July 23, 1776, to Smith and Lawrence. “I received yesterday your favour of the 19th. About  4 months since I procured admittance that unhappy person into the Hospital here, agreeing to pay 15 shillings a week for his maintenance there; but he escaped and returned to Burlington. If Mrs. Mecom or her friends can  send him back and deliver him at the Hospital, I will take care to pay the  House; or if he can be secured and maintained cheaper at or near Burlington,  I may save something out of it towards her own better subsistence. I am, Gentlemen, Your most obedient and humble servant, B. Franklin. [P.S.]  A brother of Mr. Mecon in the same unfortunate circumstance has been years upon my hands; and being taken care of in a country family, at a dollar per week, makes me think Mrs. Mecom may get the same done for less than the Hospital price.”     

Ultimately, care was arranged for Mecom in Burlington, but in the turmoil surrounding the Battle of Trenton, he escaped again. This time he was never found.

Benjamin Franklin was a very busy man in July of 1776 and had little time for personal correspondence. Research fails to reveal any other Franklin letter from July 1776 reaching the marketplace in the last 35 years. The online and printed versions of the Franklin Papers show that, though there were some half dozen official letters of committees of Congress signed by Franklin and at least one other member that month, Franklin personally wrote just two letters. One was to British General Howe on July 20 and the other to George Washington on July 22. The original letter to Washington is in an institution in Europe and the location of the original to Howe is unlisted. Relying on the Franklin Papers, this would therefore appear to be the only letter of Franklin from July 1776 clearly known to be in private hands.