Sarah Franklin Bache (1743-1808), a Revolutionary War patriot and daughter of Benjamin Franklin, led an active public life according to the standards of womanhood in the late eighteenth century. As the daughter of Benjamin Franklin she had an unusual access, for a woman, to the political life in revolutionary Philadelphia. Although her primary role was of caretaker of her family and home, Bache played an active role in the Revolution through her relief work and as her father's political hostess. The Sarah Franklin Bache papers consist of incoming and outgoing correspondence ranging from 1768 to 1807 mostly of a personal nature to and from friends and relatives. The correspondence of her relatives includes her nephew William Temple Franklin, her brother William Franklin and her children.

These photostats of letters were collected from various repositories by Lyman H. Butterfield for his book, "Letters of Benjamin Rush" 2 v. American Philosophical Society Memoirs 30(1951). Some of the topics discussed are Philadelphia and United States politics, slavery, Afro-American churches, and medicine.

This item contains entries about prominent people (primarily accounts of their deaths); Philadelphia events and gossip; the Pennsylvania Hospital; questions for Meriwether Lewis on Indian physical history, medicine, morals, and religion; and his views on marriage, religion, physicians, etc. Also includes meeting with Captain Wells and Little Turtle; speculations on Indian skin color at the equator.

This autobiography relates Rush's experiences in college and medical school; his meetings with notable doctors; his life in Scotland, England, and France; his medical views; the military and politics during the Revolutionary War; and brief sketches of personalities of that period.

Letters (including some transcripts and photostats) from and to Vaughan from many American and British correspondents, including: Also personal correspondence and business papers of Benjamin, Charles, Petty, Samuel Sr., Samuel Jr., William, William Oliver, and Sarah Vaughan (2 boxes); lectures, mostly in shorthand (3 vols.); a large number of notes and memoranda on a wide variety of topics, such as agriculture, architecture, astronomy, diplomacy, diseases, dueling, electricity, hieroglyphs, internal improvements, medicine, meteorology, land, manufactures, politics, punctuation, religion, silk-manufacturing, stock-breeding, taxation, Unitarianism, Benjamin Franklin, John Locke, Napoleon I, Joseph Priestley, Bowdoin College, town of Hallowell, Maine; notes on the peace negotiations, 1782-1783; miscellaneous legal papers; genealogy of the Abbott-Vaughan families. For a personal account of the collection, see Mrs. Mary Vaughan Marvin, "The Benjamin Vaughan Papers," APS Proceedings 95 (1951): 246-249.