Discovered by Raab, this letter features the rare “B Free Franklin” signature and is valued at $235,000
The Raab Collection announced today that it is offering for sale a Benjamin Franklin letter, written in 1768, that contains his rare “B Free Franklin” autograph, often considered a covert message of independence. Only a handful of these have reached the market in decades, and our research indicates no other known “B Free Franklin” in private hands still attached to the Autograph Letter Signed it accompanied. It is valued at $235,000.
This important letter, in which Franklin forwards information necessary to negotiate the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, was written while he was a Colonial Agent in London. Franklin supplied the accounts needed to settle an agreement between the Iroquois and Great Britain that same year at Fort Stanwix, New York. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix helped set the boundaries for the states we know today as Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia.
As he concluded the letter, he filled out the address panel, adding what is believed to be a coded statement to his compatriots back in the American colonies.
B Free Franklin
As a government official, Benjamin Franklin was entitled to use the “free frank” privilege, so that he needed only to add his signature to the address panel to send his mail without cost. As a prolific letter writer, this he often did, signing “Free B. Franklin.” However, he occasionally transposed his franking autograph and used “B Free Franklin” instead, a small act of revolutionary defiance.
The U.S. Postal Service has issued stamps to honor this unusual Franklin autograph, and the Free Franklin Post Office & Museum at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia continues to cancel stamps with the postmark “B. Free Franklin.”
This letter originally belonged to the Townsend family, an early American merchant family.
To learn more about the discovery of this remarkable letter, Nathan Raab, president of The Raab Collection and author of The Hunt for History, is available for interviews.
