Authors: Jill Lepore
51.
As Innes points out, married women could not own property, and so could neither
contract nor default on debts (“King’s Bench,” 263).
52.
James Ciment, “In Light of Failure:
Bankruptcy, Insolvency and Financial Failure in New York City, 1790–1860” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1992), 136–44; Mann,
Republic of Debtors,
chapter 5; the William Duer Papers, Box 6, New-York Historical Society; and Jill Lepore,
The Story of America: Essays on Origins
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 91–110.
53.
On where Jane lived, see Van Doren,
Jane Mecom,
24–25. Captain Hugh Ledlie boarded with Jane from 1742 to 1772, first at the Blue Ball, and later at the Mecoms’ house near the Orange Tree. Hugh Ledlie to BF, Hartford, May 22, 1787.
54.
For record books, see “Philadelphia Post Office Record Books, 1737–53,”
PBF,
2:178–83; “Philadelphia Post Office Record Book, 1757–1764,”
PBF,
7:158–60. “Philadelphia Post Office Accounts, 1757–1764,”
PBF,
7:160–62; “Receipt Book, 1742–64,”
PBF,
2:351–52.
55.
Editorial comment,
PBF,
2:178. And see Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
chapter 2.
56.
BF,
Autobiography,
91.
57.
John Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on April 5, 1741. Both Edward Mecom and JFM are listed as parents.
Manifesto Church,
163.
58.
New England Weekly Journal,
July 17, 1739.
59.
William Blackstone,
Commentaries on the Laws of England, A Facsimile of the First Edition 1765–1769
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 1:430.
60.
Hugh Ledlie to BF, Hartford, May 22, 1787. On women in Boston taking in boarders at a much higher rate than in either New York or Philadelphia, see Nash, “The Failure of Female Factory Labor in Colonial Boston,” 182–83.
61.
JFM to BF, December 17, 1786.
62.
CRG to JFM, February 20, 1776. (Jane was, at the time, in Philadelphia.)
63.
JFM to DRF, April 6, 1765. This was when she was a grandmother, caring for her grandchildren after their mother, Jane’s daughter Sarah Mecom Flagg, died.
64.
JFM to BF, June 17, 1782. This was while she was a great-grandmother, caring for her great-grandchildren after their mother, Jane’s granddaughter Jane Flagg Greene, died.
1.
Josiah Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on March 27, 1743 (Jane’s thirty-first birthday). Only Edward Mecom is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
166.
2.
BF to Josiah and Abiah Folger Franklin, April 13, 1738,
PBF,
2:202–4. Abiah, who had been even more worried than her husband, was, by this letter, mollified. As Franklin wrote to his father a month or so later, “It gave me great Pleasure when she declar’d in her next to me that she approv’d of my Letter and was now satisfy’d with me.” BF to Josiah Franklin, Philadelphia, [May?] 1738.
3.
BF,
A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge,
May 14, 1743,
PBF,
2:380–83.
4.
Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826, in
Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1829), 4:452. And see Robert A. Ferguson,
The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
5.
Lemay,
Life of BF,
2:311.
6.
BF,
Autobiography,
130. BF met Spencer in Boston in June 1743. BF misremembers this as having taken place in 1746. See also N. H. de V. Heathcote, “Franklin’s Introduction to Electricity,
Isis
46 (1955): 29–35. On Franklin as a scientist and on the world of early modern scientific inquiry in which he participated, see I. Bernard Cohen,
Benjamin Franklin’s Science
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), and especially Joyce Chaplin,
The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius
(New York: Basic Books, 2007). For his work on electricity in particular, see pp. 103–17.
7.
BF,
Poor Richard, 1751, PBF,
4:96.
8.
BF to JFM, July 28, 1743.
9.
BF, “Articles of Belief and Acts of
Religion,” November 20, 1728,
PBF,
1:109.
10.
BF,
Autobiography,
70, 68, 71, 73. And see also Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
12–17.
11.
JFM to BF, December 29, 1780.
12.
BF,
Autobiography,
65: “I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho’ some of the Dogmas of that Persuasion, such as the Eternal Decrees of God, Election, Reprobation, etc. appear’d to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the Public Assemblies of the Sect, Sunday being my Studying-Day, I never was without some religious Principles; I never doubted, for instance, the Existence of the Deity, that he made the World, and govern’d it by his Providence; that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will be punished and
Virtue rewarded either here or hereafter.” And see Ferguson,
American Enlightenment,
76–77.
13.
The influence of Whitefield and the New Lights on the Brattle Street Church, and excerpts from Cooper’s sermons, can be found in Akers,
Divine Politician,
11, 15, 17, 21, 23.
14.
Jonathan Edwards,
Some Thoughts Concerning the present Revival of Religion in New-England
(Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1742), 359, 104, 101. See also Ferguson,
American Enlightenment,
50–51.
15.
Edwards,
Some Thoughts Concerning the present Revival,
367, 372.
16.
In his
Book of Virtues, Franklin proposed beginning each day with the question, “What Good shall I do this Day?” and ending the evening by asking, “What Good have I done to day?” BF,
Autobiography,
72.
1.
BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, [1744–45]; BF to Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger Franklin, Philadelphia, September 6, 1744.
2.
On changing funeral practices over the course of the eighteenth century, see Bullock, “ ‘Often concerned in funerals,’ ” 181–211, and Bullock and McIntyre, “The Handsome Tokens of a Funeral,” 305–46.
3.
See editorial comment, Van Doren,
Letters,
40, and “Executor’s Account of Josiah Franklin’s Estate, February 12, 1753” in Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah,” 129.
4.
Josiah Franklin’s will is reprinted in Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah,” 123–24. BF
gives his share of his inheritance and the additional £30 to Jane in his (that is, BF’s) will, written in April 1757.
PBF,
7:200.
5.
Jane Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on April 14, 1745. Only Edward Mecom is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
168.
6.
James Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on August 3, 1746, by Benjamin Colman. Only Edward is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
169.
New England Weekly Journal,
July 17, 1739.
7.
Flavel,
A Token for Mourners,
68–69.
8.
Benjamin Colman,
A Devout Contemplation on the Meaning of Divine Providence, in the Early Death of Pious and Lovely Children
(Boston: John Allen, 1714), 4, 26.
9.
The New-England Primer Enlarged
(Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1727), n.p. Various editions of the
New-England Primer
were published regularly, and frequently, during the years Jane was raising her children.
10.
Josiah Williams was born on December 31, 1747.
PBF,
1:lviii. An obituary refers to him as “Blind from his Infancy.”
Boston Evening-Post,
August 17, 1772.
11.
Mary Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on March 6, 1748, by Samuel Cooper. Both Edward Mecom and JFM are listed as parents.
Manifesto Church,
171.
12.
On March 27, 1748, Jane turned thirty-six. Her first child was born on June 4, 1729, when she was seventeen. She conceived around September 4, 1728, when she was sixteen.
13.
The
portrait is now owned by Harvard. Henry Wilder Foote,
Robert Feke: Colonial Portrait Painter
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 67–68, 151–54. And Sellers,
Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture,
24–45.
14.
JFM to BF, August 16, 1787.
15.
See Chaplin,
The First Scientific American
, 103–17.
16.
BF, “On the Internal State of America,” 1785.
PBF,
unpublished. On the use of this metaphor among American writers, see Ferguson,
American Enlightenment,
chapter 2.
17.
Turgot is cited in Ferguson,
American Enlightenment,
36, and Lemay,
The Life of BF,
3:135. See also
Oeuvres de Mr. Turgot
(Paris: de l’Imprimerie de A. Belin, 1808–11), 9:140.
18.
BF to Abiah Folger Franklin, Philadelphia, April 12, 1750.
19.
Jane owned the 1769 London edition (the fourth edition); it is now at Princeton. BF sent her six copies, for distribution; BF to JFM, February 23, 1769.
20.
JFM to BF, August 25, 1786.
21.
BF to Peter Collinson, Philadelphia, May 21, 1751.
22.
In the 1740s, Williams’s advertisements ran regularly in the
Boston Evening-Post
.
23.
BF to Abiah Folger Franklin, Philadelphia, October 16, 1747.
24.
BF, “Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c.”
PBF,
4:228.
25.
His reckoning was not far wrong. Five grew up to have children of their own: three of Jane’s children, Edward, Benjamin, and Sarah, all lived long enough to marry and have children, as did two of Franklin’s children, William and Sarah.
26.
Abiah Franklin to BF and DRF, Boston, October 14, 1751.
27.
BF to JFM, October 24, 1751; “I beg’d your
Plain Truth
of Mrs. Mecom,” Perkins
wrote Franklin.
John Perkins to BF, Boston, February 17, 1752. Some of Perkins’s case notes from the 1752
smallpox epidemic can be found in Perkins, “Medical, Political, & Religious &c.,” 32.
28.
BF to
Abiah Folger Franklin, Philadelphia, April 1752.
29.
Perkins reported on the smallpox epidemic in a letter to Franklin dated August 3, 1752, Boston.
30.
BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, May 21, 1752.
31.
Of Josiah Franklin’s seven children by his first wife, Ann, five lived to adulthood. Of those five, two had children. Samuel Franklin had only one child, a daughter named Elizabeth, which was his wife’s name.
Anne Franklin Harris had both daughters and sons, including a daughter named Ann and a son named Josiah. Of Josiah Franklin’s ten children by his second wife, Abiah, eight may have had children. John had only one son, whom he named John. Peter’s issue is uncertain; Lydia had perhaps a daughter.
Mary Franklin Homes had three children, two sons and a daughter named Abiah. James had six children, including a daughter named Abiah and another named Ann, which was his wife’s name. Sarah Franklin Davenport had five children, including a son named Josiah and a daughter named Abiah. (See “Descendants of Josiah Franklin,”
PBF,
1:lvi–lxiii.) In short, Benjamin Franklin was the only one of Josiah Franklin’s children not to name any of his children after either his parents, himself, or his spouse. And he was the only one of Josiah and Abiah Franklin’s children not to name a child after his parents.
32.
“The stone placed over their graves by their youngest son,”
Carl Van Doren observed, “perpetuated also the special gratitude of their youngest daughter.” (
Jane Mecom,
49.) Van Doren counts a different seven than I do. He counted all of Jane’s children still alive at the time of Abiah Franklin’s death: nine. Then he discounted Benny and Peter, because they were no longer living at the
Blue Ball but were, instead, apprenticed. BF includes the entire text of the epitaph in his
Autobiography,
but it first appeared in print in the August 1, 1758, issue of the
New-England Magazine,
printed by Benjamin Mecom.
1.
BF, “Articles of Agreement with
James Parker,” February 20, 1741–42,
PBF,
2:341–45. See also, Worthington C. Ford, “Letters from James Parker to Franklin,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
16 (1902): 186–89.
2.
BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, undated but ca. 1745. On Parker, see Alan Dyer,
A Biography of James Parker, Colonial Printer
(Troy, NY: Whitston, 1982), and, for more on Franklin and Parker, as well as similar arrangements, including the financial underpinnings of Franklin’s partnerships with Benjamin Mecom, see Ralph Frasca,
Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
3.
BF, “Advice to a Young Tradesman,” was published in George Fisher,
The American Instructor; or, Young Man’s Best Companion
(Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1748). See
PBF,
3:306–8.
4.
BF to JFM, undated but ca. June 1748.
5.
BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, September 14, 1752.
6.
BF to JFM, September 20, 1750.
7.
See Lemay,
Life of BF,
2:398.
8.
On Franklin sending Smith to
Antigua, see Wilberforce Eames,
The Antigua Press and Benjamin Mecom, 1748-8–1765
(Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1929), 3-3–4. Smith died in June or July 1752. Eames,
The Antigua Press,
8.
9.
BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, September 14, 1752.
10.
David Barry Gaspar,
Bondsmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1985), and Brian Dyde,
A History of Antigua: The Unsuspected Isle
(London: Macmillan, 2000).
11.
BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, November 30, 1752.
12.
Fragment of a letter from WF to JFM, undated but probably 1752.
13.
Boston Evening
-
Post,
October 10, 1752. This ad, about the real estate, ran again in the same paper on November 6, 1752. A new ad appeared on July 23, 1753, during BF’s visit to Boston. John Franklin and William Homes were named as the persons handling the
sale. The sale was announced for August 21.
14.
On William Homes, see “William Homes, Sr.,” in Patricia E. Kane,
Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers
(New Haven:
Yale University Art Gallery, 1998), 559–66.
15.
Jane’s brother John suffered from an excruciatingly painful bladder stone. In December 1752, Benjamin Franklin sent to his brother a catheter he’d drawn up the plans for and had a silversmith build out of silver pipes and wire. BF also sent along directions for use and care, including, kindly, tips on how to “preserve it against Putrefaction.” BF to John Franklin, Philadelphia, December 8, 1752.
16.
On the rent owed by the Mecoms, see Van Doren,
Jane Mecom,
44.
17.
JFM to Sarah Franklin Bache, May 29, 1786. This letter is a corrected copy; the original is missing.
18.
JFM to BF, August 29, 1789. Abiah Folger Franklin writes about a visit from Keziah Folger Coffin in 1751, when Abiah was dying. Like Jane, Keziah also seems to have been an avid reader of the writings of Benjamin Franklin. “My Cozen Kesiah Coffin was hear last week and she was Sorroy that the werkes and letter was not yet printed. She bid me tell you that She Shold be glad how soone you coold do them for She wants to have a few of them very much.” (Abiah Franklin to BF and DRF, October 14, 1751.) Van Doren (
Letters,
45) was not able to identify the “werkes and letter” referred to here; nor have I. For another visit, see JFM to DRF, November 24, 1766: “Kezia Coffin … has been in town this fall & Desiered me to Remember Her to you when I wrot.” Jane apparently wrote to Coffin frequently. “I Receiv’d all your Letters,” Coffin wrote back (these letters do not survive). Keziah Folger Coffin to JFM, August 6, 1768.
19.
BF to John Franklin, Philadelphia, January 2, 1753. See also Lemay,
Life of BF,
3:319.
20.
Draft of a letter from John Franklin to BF, [January 1753],
PBF,
4:422. At this point, the household goods had sold; the house and land had not.
21.
PBF,
2:368.
22.
Boston Gazette,
July 31, 1753. BF received an honorary master’s degree from Yale on September 12, 1753; see
PBF,
5:58 and Lemay,
Life of BF,
3:321. This was done in absentia, but in 1755 BF stopped in New Haven, and
Ezra Stiles delivered a Latin oration about him on February 5, 1755.
PBF,
5:492–500. On November 30, 1753, BF received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, see
PBF,
5:126–33.
23.
BF took a mortgage out on the Douse house in 1748, as security on a £60 loan to the Douses. Lemay says that sometime during BF’s 1753 visit, he took out a new mortgage on the house, and the deed was recorded on September 27, with
Thomas Hubbart as witness. Lemay,
Life of BF,
3:319.
PBF
(5:66) says that after Captain Douse’s death, Elizabeth Franklin Douse renewed the mortgage in her own name, acknowledging a
debt of £100 rather than £60. The mortgage deed is transcribed in
PBF,
5:67. Some more about the history of the house can be gleaned in Frank Chocteau Brown, “The Clough-Langdon House, 21 Unity Street, Boston,”
Old-Time New England
37 (1947): 79–85. Brown supposes that Jane Franklin Mecom and her family began living at the house at 19 Unity Street in about 1753, but this supposition is incorrect.
24.
Franklin’s surviving correspondence with Jonathan Williams Sr. is extensive. It begins in March 1755. Williams handled a range of Franklin’s business affairs, including distributing
gifts and cash to Elizabeth Franklin Douse and Jane Franklin Mecom and taking care of the Douse house. Franklin also shipped Williams reams and reams of paper, to be sold to tradesmen, for packing, and to printers, for printing. See, e.g., BF to Jonathan Williams Sr., Philadelphia, October 16, 1755.
25.
Boston Gazette,
November 13, 1753. On taverns and tavern culture, see Sharon V. Salinger,
Taverns and Drinking in Early America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); on the location of taverns in Boston, see 191–94. Salinger calculates that between 1736–37 and 1764–65, women received 41 percent of all tavern licenses (163). These women, however, were heads of household.
26.
BF to JFM, June 28, 1756.
27.
Benjamin Mecom to DRF, September 21, 1754.
28.
BF to William Strahan, Philadelphia, April 18, 1754.
29.
See Roelker,
BF and CRG,
1–2. JFM wrote CRG, “Believe me to be be yr most faithfull & obliged frind,” JFM to CRG, Philadelphia, November 24, 1775.
30.
The earliest correspondence between JFM and CRG to survive is from 1775, but it seems likely that they corresponded before this time, probably beginning around 1755.
31.
BF to JFM, February 12, 1756. BF knew that Benny wanted to leave the island in February. In June, BF wrote to JFM on Benny’s resolve. BF had received several letters from Benny expressing “the inflexibility of his Determination to leave the Island; but without saying where he propos’d to go …” BF to JFM, June 28, 1756. On December 30, BF sent a letter to Jane and Edward Mecom, carried by Benny. This means that Benny sailed from
Antigua to Philadelphia sometime between June and December 1756 and left for Boston around December 30. (See BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, December 30, 1756.) Benny had arrived in Boston by February 21, 1757. (See BF to JFM, February 21, 1757: “I am glad to hear your son is got well home.”)
32.
BF to JFM, June 28, 1756.
33.
The horse is mentioned in BF to JFM, May 21, 1757. Benny insisted on leaving Antigua, and then BF told Jane that Benny “purposes to set up his Business together with Bookselling” (December 30, 1756). BF did much to help Benny set up, helping him secure books, type, and paper (BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, December 30, 1756).
34.
BF to JFM, February 21, 1757.
35.
Lemay,
Life of BF,
3:563.
36.
On the delayed London voyage, see
PBF,
7:234, 174, 219.
37.
BF to JFM, April 19, 1757.
38.
BF to JFM, May 30, 1757.
39.
BF to JFM, May 21, 1757.
40.
Ebenezer Mecom is listed in the
PBF
(1:lxi) as unmarried, but he married Susannah Hiller in the
Brattle Street Church on July 21, 1757.
Manifesto Church,
249. She appears to have been a widow, as she is listed as “Mrs. Susan. Hiller.”
41.
BF to JFM, May 30, 1757.
42.
Ibid.
43.
“This is to notify the Publick,” advertisement,
Boston News-Letter,
October 28, 1756.
44.
BF to JFM, May 30, 1757.
45.
BF to JFM, May 21, 1757.
46.
William Homes Sr. employed several apprentices in these years, including his son William Homes Jr., who, in 1763, when he turned twenty-one, took over his father’s shop. John Mecom, born in 1741, was a year older than Homes’s son and was apparently unhappy in his
apprenticeship, which he did not complete; instead he tagged after his older brother Benjamin and attempted to become a printer. Kane,
Colonial Silversmiths,
553–59.
47.
BF to JFM, May 30, 1757. Entries for dealings with a John Mecom, dated 1759, appear in a ledger book kept by Jane’s brother Peter, in Newport. It’s unlikely that this is Jane’s son, who was still an apprentice in Boston at that point.
Peter Franklin, Ledger Begun November the 6th, 1741, Franklin Papers, APS.
48.
BF, “Last Will and Testament,”
PBF,
7:199–200.
49.
BF,
Poor Richard Improved … 1758, PBF,
7:341–42.
50.
BF,
Father Abraham’s Speech
(Boston: Benjamin Mecom, 1758).
51.
On the quite different publishing history of
The Way to Wealth
in England, see Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
chapter 7.
52.
JFM to BF, July 4, 1784.
53.
BF to JFM, April 19, 1757.