With a face as familiar, he wrote, as the man in the moon, Benjamin Franklin was one the most recognizable Americans of the eighteenth century, and one of the most written about. A scientist, inventor, pamphleteer, printer, politician, and diplomat, and above all an institution builder, Franklin's intellect and organizational skills, combined with a preternatural gift for crafting his image to appeal to a diverse array of audiences has ensured his lasting reputation.
The story of Franklin's life has become so thoroughly ingrained in American popular culture -- through his autobiography, if nothing else -- that it requires little more than the briefest recapitulation. Born in 1706 to a tallow chandler from Boston, Franklin ran away from an apprenticeship at his brother James' printing establishment in 1723 to strike out on his own in that other colonial metropolis, Philadelphia. After barely a year in the Quaker city, the restless and ambitious young man traveled to England to purchase an outfit and refine his printing skills, and within a short time after returning in October 1726, he established a reputation as the finest printer in the city. His position not only as a printer, but a writer was clinched in 1729 with his purchase of the city's most important newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette and with the appearance of his widely popular Poor Richard's Almanac in 1732. Equally important, in 1730 he was appointed to the lucrative position of official printer to the Province, testimony to his abilities as a printer and a harbinger of what would come as a politician.
From early in his career, Franklin fashioned himself as a promoter of the public weal, using his extraordinary organizational skills to establish a series of organizations that buoyed the city's intellectual and cultural life. His discussion and mutual improvement society, the Junto (1727) was followed by the Library Company of Philadelphia (1731) and a suite of other organizations that included, among others, the city's first fire company, an insurance company, and an academy that later grew into the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was also the principal founder and first secretary of the nation's first learned society, the American Philosophical Society (1743). Although subsequent events ensured that he would be largely an absentee leader for much of its early history, his colleagues in the APS considered Franklin so essential to the enterprise that they elected him president when the Society was revived in the late 1760s. Although he lived in Philadelphia for a total of only about seven of the twenty one years in which he was president of the Society, he exerted an enormous influence over the selection of its membership and its priorities.
Part of Franklin's importance to the Library Company and the APS, and to the civic culture of Philadelphia more generally, lay in the reputation he earned as America's preeminent savant. His ingenuity in invention was renowned, and was piqued by his reputation for bringing the same concerns for public welfare to mechanical work as to intellectual. His Franklin stove (1742), for example, was hailed as safer and more efficient than its predecessors, and Franklin was credited (sometimes erroneously) with a host of other inventions, from swim fins to bifocals, bulls-eye "busy-body" mirrors, the lightning rod, and extensible arms.
Franklin's scientific work, however, was the source of even greater fame. Beginning in 1745, he conducted a series of electrical experiments that brought him international acclaim, demonstrating the identity of lightning and electricity and later championing the single fluid theory of electricity and formulating a theory of the conservation of electrical charge. On the basis of this work, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1756 and was given honorary degrees by Harvard and Oxford. Franklin was also noted for research on oceanic currents and for contributions to knowledge in dozens of other areas.
Scarcely a decade after his emigration to Philadelphia, Franklin began to turn to more direct participation in the political life of the colonies. He was elected clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1736 and Postmaster at Philadelphia in 1737, eventually becoming one of two deputy Postmasters General for the colonies in 1753. Having amassed his fortune, Franklin retired from active involvement in business affairs in 1749 to devote himself to formal politics. A fierce partisan in the anti-Proprietary faction of the Pennsylvania Assembly during the Seven Years' War, he was the prime mover behind the Albany Plan of Union of 1754, in which the prospect of uniting all of the British North American colonies under a single government was first proposed as a measure to improve mutual defense and for "other important general purposes." Although the plan was ultimately not approved, Franklin emerged as a major figure in colonial politics.
In July 1757, Franklin was dispatched by the General Assembly to go to London and request that the Proprietors' be stripped of control of the government in Pennsylvania. He spent most of the next eighteen years in England as colonial agent for Pennsylvania and other colonies, weathering the imperial crises of the 1760s and although he was steadfast in directing his efforts toward reconciliation of the growing differences between the colonies and crown, he drifted gradually into the radical Whig camp.
Franklin's quickening into the revolutionary cause came in January 1774 when he was called before the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs to answer charges that he had stolen letters from Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of Massachusetts, with the intent of positioning himself to usurp Hutchinson's seat and inciting unrest. Stripped of his position as postmaster and impaired in his ability to operate, Franklin returned to Pennsylvania in 1775 and was elected to the Continental Congress. In the following year, he was selected as a member of the drafting committee for the Declaration of Independence and later helped frame the Articles of Confederation. From 1776 until 1785, he was appointed by the American government as Commissioner to the Court of France, helping to sway King Louis to support the American cause with money and arms and to negotiate the peace between the United States and Great Britain.
Franklin remained active into his eighties, serving as a delegate and key contributor to the federal Constitutional Convention in 1787. A late convert to antislavery, he also became the first president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Franklin died in Philadelphia in April 17, 1790. His common law wife, Deborah Read, predeceased him in 1774. He left behind his estranged illegitimate son William (in exile in England), his daughter Sarah Franklin Bache, and grandsons William Temple Franklin and Benjamin Franklin Bache.
Dr. Franklin seems to have contracted, early in life, the habit of preserving his correspondence, drafts of letters, and memoranda of all kinds, and the mass which he accumulated during his long and active career was very large. In his last Will, dated July 17th, 1788, he bequeathed his manuscripts and papers to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, who used them in preparation of "The Life and Writings" of his grandfather. These manuscripts and papers William Temple Franklin stored at Champlost, the country seat near Philadelphia, of his friend George Fox. A portion of them he subsequently took to Europe for use in the completion of this work which he published in six volumes in London in 1817-1818.
William Temple Franklin died in Paris on May 25th, 1823, and by his Will gave the papers and manuscripts which he had inherited from his grandfather to George Fox, and upon the death of the latter, his children, Charles P. Fox and Mary Fox, in July, 1840, deposited the collection with The American Philosophical Society, and later, on September 17th of the same year, formally gave them to this Society.
In the transfer there was overlooked a small portion of the Franklin papers which had become mixed with the Fox family papers also stored in the loft of the stable at Champlost. About twenty-two years later, when this loft was being cleaned out and the papers therein were being carred off to the paper mill, a small lot of them, most of which had originally belonged to the Franklin collection, was rescued from destruction by Mrs. Holbrook, a friend and at the time house-guest of Miss. Fox, to whom they were then given. In 1903 these were purchased from her descendants by friends of the University of Pennsylvania, and presented to its Library.
Before making the gift to the American Philosophical Society, upwards of one hundred letters, for the most part to Dr. Franklin from members of his family, were separated from the collection and presented by Charles P. Fox to Dr. Franklin Bache, a great-grandson of Dr. Franklin, and are now in possession of his son, Dr. Thomas Hewson Bache. Most of these were printed by William Duane in an octavo volume of one hundred and ninety-five pages, published in New York in 1859, by C. Benjamin Richardson.
The papers taken abroad by William Temple Franklin have a less clear history. For some years they were in the possession of a tailor in St. James's Street, London, over whose shop he had lodgings, and in the year 1840 were found by a gentleman who had been a fellow-lodger there with him, "roughly bundled-up" on the top shelf of a closet in an upper room which William Temple Franklin had occupied. This gentleman, an officer under the British Government, kept these manuscripts for ten or eleven years, according to Henry Stevens, and from time to time offered time in bulk to the British Museum, Lord Palmerston, and to the successive American Ministers at the Court of St. James, from 1804-1851. In the latter year they were offered to Hon. Abbott Lawrence, at that time American Minister in London, who, having no authority to purchase them for his Government, referred the owner to Henry Stevens as a likely buyer, and he, three days later, purchased the entire collection.
Mr. Stevens repaired and arranged the papers, and added to them a number of Dr. Franklin's printed works and imprints, and finally in 1882 the entire collection was purchased from him by the Government of the United States, at the instigation of the then Secretary of State, the Honorable James G. Blaine, and was deposited in the Library of the Department of State. Later, under the Executive Order of March 9th, 1903, all the manuscripts and papers in this collection, with the exception of the diplomatic records, were transferred to the Library of Congress. A Calendar of the Stevens collection was prepared under the direction of Mr. Worthington C. Ford, Chief of the Division of Manuscripts, and was published in 1905 by the Library of Congress.
So far as is known, these four collections constitute the whole of the remaining papers of Dr. Franklin, although others may be in existence, for before Philadelphia was occupied by the British in 1777, a large chest filled with his most valuable early papers, including the drafts of his letters for twenty years, covering the whole period of his residence in England, was sent for safe keeping to Joseph Galloway's home at Trevose, near Bristol, Pennsylvania. During the military operations around Philadelphia, the British visited Mr. Galloway's house, broke open this chest and rifled its contents. After the evacuation of this part of the country by the British forces, Richard Bache, Dr. Franklin's son-in-law, hearing of the condition of these papers, went to Trevose and collected the scattered, mud-bespattered, and much injured remnants of the contents of the chest, and removed them to Philadelphia. It seems most likely that all of the papers that were then lost were ruthlessly destroyed, for if any of them were still in existence they would probably have come to light before this time.
In preparing this Calendar the Editor has adhered to the spelling of proper names as given in the original manuscripts and has, when it seemed desirable, endeavored to supply omissions in the letters so as to promote the clear understanding of the text, all such additions have been enclosed within [ ], while in the Index he has sought to give such information as would enable the reader to identify the authors of the letters and the persons mentioned therein. Letters which have been published in full elsewhere, have been scantily calendared in these volumes, and a footnote reference given to the publication in which they appear in extenso.
The very full Index, which accompanies these volumes, it is hoped will render their contents readily available for reference.
The Editor takes pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness for valuable assistance received from many sources in the preparation of this Calendar, and especially to Mrs. Lightner Witmer for the admirable manner in which she had calendared a very considerable portion of the correspondence, and to Miss Rebecca Edmiston Kirkpatrick for the conscientious and painstaking labor with which she has assisted in the passage of the work through the press, and in the preparation of the Index.
I.M.H.
PHILADELPHIA,
September, 1908.
85.5 linear feet; 13,284 Items
Gift of Charles Pemberton Fox, 1840.
In his will of July 17, 1788, Benjamin Franklin bequeathed his books and manuscripts to his beloved grandson, William Temple Franklin, presumably for posterity. The subsequent peregrinations of the papers, however, rival those of the man himself, traversing two continents, three countries, and several archival repositories.
At the time of Franklin's death in 1790, the papers were stored at Champlost, a country estate outside of Philadelphia owned by George Fox. Fox, a longtime friend of the family, agreed to care for the papers while Temple culled a selection of letters and documents to help prepare for an edition of his grandfather's autobiography, suitably updated to reflect later life. Temple never returned to the States, and after his death on May 25, 1823, the portions of the papers that he had with him were discovered in London and eventually entered into the collections of the Library of Congress. The manuscript of the autobiography is now at the Huntington Library, having been obtained by John Bigelow from the DeSenarmont family in Paris, descendants of LeVeillard, to whom Franklin had sent a copy for criticism. The material at Champlost was formally bequeathed to Fox, who in turn, left the papers to his children Charles Pemberton Fox and Mary Fox.
During the 1830s, the Harvard professor Jared Sparks was given access to the papers, which served as the major source for his monumental ten volume Works of Benjamin Franklin (Boston: Hillard, Gray and Co., 1840). It appears that Sparks may have encouraged the younger Foxes to donate the papers to the American Philosophical Society to make them more readily available to the scholarly public. The collection of approximately 14,000 items arrived at the American Philosophical Society in 1840, becoming the nucleus of the current Benjamin Franklin Collections.
As it turns out, however, not all of the papers made it to the APS. A portion remained at the Fox home, perhaps intentionally, and in 1887 there passed from Mary Fox to Thomas Hewson Bache, who decided to donate them to the University of Pennsylvania, seeding a third important collection of Franklin Papers.
Other Franklin collections, some substantial, have periodically come to the surface, having descended through other lines of the Franklin family or, more often, through correspondents of Franklin. The second largest grouping at the APS (1,100 items) arrived in 1936 as a gift from Franklin and Nannie Bache.
Cite as: Benjamin Franklin Papers, Mss.B.F85, American Philosophical Society.
Recatalogued and encoded by rsc, April 2003. Reprocessed by Michael P. Miller, 2014-2016.
Portions of the reprocessing project were funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
This guide is an updated version of I. Minis Hays, Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia: APS, 1908).
The Franklin papers contain several letters which refer to African Americans, particularly in regards to the need to abolish slavery and the establishment of a school for African American children.
The Franklin papers contain numerous letters which may be of interest to naval historians. The following are organized by subject:
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin are a rich source as varied and expansive as Dr. Franklin's storied life. The Collection has been calendared, catalogued, and much of it is transcribed in printed volumes and online at www.franklinpapers.org.
Most notable in the collection is a series of bound volumes that capture different aspects of Franklin's professional career. The bound volumes include a record of the colonial Post Office that Franklin headed, numerous account books from Franklin's time in England and France, and official account books of the U.S. mission in France. In addition to these bound account and ledger books, the collection also includes a copy of the earliest deed known deed for the Pennsylvania statehouse property, various sketches and drawings thought to be done by Franklin, and four large volumes of a journal of John Lindsay Crawford's travels with the Russian Army from 1737-1739 that include large maps of Europe that Franklin kept in his library.
The Franklin Papers, along with the papers of his grandsons (William Temple Franklin and Benjamin Franklin Bache) at the APS, provide a nearly complete picture of Benjamin's time in France as an American ambassador to France during the American Revolution. Aside from the manuscript records from this period, the collection includes a set of account books detailing both the official and personal transactions of Franklin in France.
The APS also houses a collection of books that came from Franklin's personal library. The library offers insight into Franklin's own reading and intellectual life. A box of miscellaneous papers in the manuscript collection may also be of related research interest. This box includes a variety of documents that Franklin had in his possession, such as copies of newspapers that have marginalia, that are not included in the official published papers.
Due to the size of the collection, the content has been divided into multiple inventories. Please follow the links below to browse the contents.
