by Nick Bunker
17. Pemberton’s ingenuity: James Wilson, ed., A Course of Chemistry…formerly given by Dr Henry Pemberton (London, 1771), Biographical Preface, with my quotation coming from pp. iii–iv.
18. A Harlot’s Progress: Paulson, Hogarth, Chapters 8–10. On the identity of Mrs. T: see note 19.
19. Among James Ralph’s friends in London was a young physician, Thomas Dale, a translator of scientific books who moved in the same circles as Richard Mead. In the 1730s Dale set up a practice in Charleston, South Carolina, from where he wrote letters home to another friend, Thomas Birch, later the secretary of the Royal Society, who also knew Ralph well. On December 19, 1736 (BL, Birch Papers, Add. Ms. 4304, fols. 65–67), Thomas Dale wrote these words to Mr. Birch: “I have seen some extracts of The Prompter [a critical magazine for theatergoers] by the manner and style I take Ralph to have a hand, pray let’s know what he does now and how he lives, whether still with Astraea, & what’s gone with the women and children—I don’t remember I ever mentioned that some people here who knew Jenny Wilkins thought this a good place for her as a milliner or sempstress if you see her please tell her.”
“Astraea” was the fictitious name that James Ralph gave in 1729 to the dedicatee of his poem Clarinda, or the Fair Libertine. Dale’s letter appears to suggest that Ralph had a series of relationships with women who bore him children, one of whom was a milliner, Jenny Wilkins, who might well be identical with Franklin’s Mrs. T. One final point is worth making. A very sociable fellow, Thomas Birch served as a connecting link between Franklin and many of the leading writers and thinkers in England. In his diary for 1738, we find Birch dining with the poet James Thomson on September 7 and with William Hogarth on October 30. He had dinner with James Ralph on January 27, 1739. Fast-forward to Franklin’s arrival in London in the summer of 1757, and we see him dining with Birch five times during his first two months in the city. One wonders whether they also discussed the fate of the women who fell for Ralph. Birch’s diary with lists of his dinner companions is at BL, Add. Ms. 4478c.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE PAPISTS OF DUKE STREET
1. Duke Street and Lincoln’s Inn Fields: A. C. B. Urwin, “The Public Trustee Office: A History of the Site” (typescript dated 1973, at the Guildhall Library, London); and Sir John Summerson, Georgian London (London, 2003), pp. 16–17.
2. Catholics in London and the Sardinian Chapel: Edwin H. Burton, The Life and Times of Bishop Challoner (London, 1909), Vol. 1, pp. 69–81; and Eamonn Duffy, “Richard Challoner: A Memoir,” in Duffy, ed., Challoner and His Church: A Catholic Bishop in Georgian England (London, 1981), pp. 6–11; and regarding Catholics on the stage, see the biography of Susanna Maria Cibber (1714–66) in ODNB. The ward of Farringdon Without, where Samuel Palmer’s printing house was located, had a remarkably high number of Roman Catholic residents. At the time of Walpole’s tax on Catholics in 1723, the assessors counted twenty-five suspected Papists in the ward, while the average number in each of the other city wards was only four: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLA/047/LR/02/04/059, August 1723.
3. I have established the identity of Franklin’s landlady from tax records; from the list of Catholics who refused the oath of allegiance; and from newspaper advertisements. The manuscript sources are at the LMA: Westminster sewer rate book, 1723, LMA, WCS/666, pp. 19–21, showing Mrs. Elizabeth Holt as a tenant of John Richardson at the eastern end of Duke Street (north side); and the list of recusant Papists, April 21, 1718, MR/R/F/026. The newspaper sources, which refer to Mrs. Holt’s Italian warehouse and describe her merchandise, are the Daily Post, November 17, 1725; Daily Courant, May 29, 1727; and Daily Post, June 21, 1727.
4. Anti-Catholicism in Boston: Thomas H. O’Connor, Boston Catholics (Boston, 1998), pp. 9–10. Roman Catholics in colonial Pennsylvania: Joseph L. J. Kirlin, Catholicity in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1909), pp. 23–26, 39–41, and 81–83.
5. In the April 1718 roll of recusant Papists at the London Metropolitan Archives, the Holborn names include two spinsters, Martha Beck and Elizabeth Sherwood, alongside Mrs. Holt and her daughter. One of these spinsters may have been Franklin’s maiden lady. It seems to me that the more likely candidate is Miss Sherwood. During the 1640s there was a Catholic gentry family of that name from Somerset who also lived in Holborn. On the wider significance of Franklin’s acquaintance with Roman Catholics in London: Kerry S. Walters, Benjamin Franklin and His Gods (Urbana, IL, 1999), pp. 70−2.
6. John Watts and the Tonsons: Hazel Wilkinson, “Benjamin Franklin’s London Printing 1725–6,” in Proceedings of the Bibliographical Society of America 110, no. 2 (2016): 150–52 and 174–80.
7. Work in the press room: Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, 1683–4 (Oxford, 1962), Chapter 24, “The Press Man’s Trade.” Work rate and output per hour: James Mosley, “The Technologies of Printing,” in Michael Suarez SJ and Michael Turner, eds., Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge, UK, 2009), Vol. 10, 1695–1830, pp. 179–82.
8. “Constant and methodical…”: Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, 1683–4, p. 303.
9. Rules and practices of printing Chapels in London: Ibid., pp. 323–29.
10. Thomas Denham’s business: See note 4 to the next chapter.
11. Ackers and Wygate: D. F. McKenzie, ed., Stationers’ Company Apprentices, 1701–1800 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 1–2, 34, and 258.
12. Wygate was apprenticed in 1721 to James Bettenham, a nonjuror who printed books with Jacobite tendencies. For Bettenham’s connection with Mist, see James Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper and Its Development (Cambridge, England, 1986), p. 215. Wygate’s family: parish register of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, with John Wygate’s baptism dated March 15, 1706; and the will of his mother, Anna Wygate, proved January 20, 1737, in which she left him only £300: NAK, PROB 11/687/197. That sum would have been only just enough in 1737 to maintain a gentleman in London for eighteen months.
13. James Salter: ODNB; and A Catalogue of The Rarities To Be seen at Don Saltero’s Coffee House in Chelsea (London, 1733), with his piece of asbestos listed on page 10.
14. Career of Charles Ackers: D. F. Mackenzie and J. C. Ross, A Ledger of Charles Ackers, Printer of the London Magazine (Oxford, 1968), introductory essay, pp. 1–28; and for remarks on his character: Isaac Kimber, Sermons (London, 1756), pp. xiv–xv. Kimber was a Baptist minister whom Ackers befriended, employing him as a proofreader. Caslon and Benjamin Franklin: C. William Miller, Benjamin Frankin’s Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766 (American Philosophical Society, 1974), pp. xxxii–xxxiv. Franklin’s business connection with Ackers is evidenced by a note in one of his account books: Lemay 2, pp. 268 and 496n.
15. The London Magazine: Notice in The Daily Journal, May 10, 1732.
CHAPTER TWELVE: SEAWEED, SICKNESS, AND THE JUNTO
1. A very handsome book, beautifully illustrated, the second volume of Sir Hans Sloane’s Voyage to the Islands appeared in London in the spring of 1726. On pages 341–48, it contains Sloane’s journal of his voyage from Jamaica in 1689, with points of similarity to Franklin’s account of his trip on the Berkshire.
2. Wollaston and “equivocal generation”: William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (London, 1724–25), pp. 90–92. Also, for contemporary debate about the issue: Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth Century French Thought (Stanford, 1997), pp. 354–66; and Edward G. Ruestow, “Leeuwenhoek and the Campaign Against Spontaneous Generation,” in Journal of the History of Biology 17, no. 2 (Summer 1984), pp. 225−248.
3. Keimer’s almanac: Jacob Taylor, A Complete Ephemeris for the Year 1726 (Philadelphia, 1725), with Sarah Read named on the title page as one of the retailers who sold it. Titan Leeds the sea captain: AWM, May 24–31, 1722.
4. Thomas Denham’s account book, 1726–28: HSP, Am. 9055, from which a profile of his business can be created. The longest entri
es relate to Denham’s ship’s chandlering clients, including a Quaker shipowner, Daniel Flexney, who later became one of the busiest transatlantic merchants in London, frequently referred to in the English press and in the mercantile records at HSP. Since Flexney continued in business until his death in 1748, this connection alone would probably have sufficed to make the firm of Denham & Franklin a powerful force in Philadelphia; and so if the firm had survived, Franklin might never have printed another word. Denham’s friendship with Plumstead is documented in Denham’s will, proved July 29, 1728, on microfilm at HSP. Plumstead was one of his executors.
5. Winter of 1726–27 and the epidemic: Letters of Isaac Norris Sr. to Joseph Pike, February 12 and May 10, 1727, in his letter book, Norris Family Papers, Coll 454 (Vol. 2), HSP.
6. Benjamin Senior’s closing years: Notes in Vol. 2 of his Commonplace Book (BFSCPB), with his list of relevant psalms. My quotation is from Psalm 119, v. 71. The death notice: New England Weekly Journal, March 27, 1727.
7. George Webb at Balliol: Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1715–1886 (Oxford, 1891), p. 1516. The Webb family papers, with details of their estates, are at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham, England.
8. Discovered by the Philadelphia historian George W. Boudreau, Scull’s Junto notes were first published in July 2007 in Professor Boudreau’s paper, “Solving the Mystery of the Junto’s Missing Member: John Jones, Shoemaker,” in PMHB 131, no. 3, (July, 2007), pp. 307−17. The originals are in Scull’s notebooks at HSP.
9. William Coleman: Whitefield Jenks Bell Jr., Patriot Improvers: Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society (APS, 1997), Vol. 1, pp. 15–19. Despite his very close friendship with Franklin, Robert Grace remains an obscure figure. The principal source is Mrs. Thomas P. James, Memorial of Thomas Potts Jr (Cambridge, MA, 1874), pp. 375–91, but like many family histories written in the nineteenth century it may be unreliable. For example, it contains an implausible genealogy making Robert Grace’s father out to be an Irish Jacobite nobleman who had fled into exile with James II and served as a soldier of fortune in Europe before going to Barbados. More likely, he came from a Grace family of clergymen in Staffordshire, England: see Henry Sanders, History and Antiquities of Shenstone (London, 1794), pp. 92–97, referring to a Robert Grace “who married and settled in America.” The Graces also had a brass foundry in Birmingham. The reason why his origins may be significant is simply this: that Grace was Franklin’s principal contact in the Pennsylvania iron and steel industry, and the man who arranged the casting of Franklin’s iron fireplace. In the 1730s, Grace spent several years traveling in Europe studying metallurgy, returning in the spring of 1737.
10. William Parsons: There is a biographical sketch in LLP 2, pp. 801–8, but it chiefly deals with his career after 1741, when he became surveyor general of Pennsylvania. For his shoemaking and for his earlier surveying work, the sources are his account book (1723–26), and his field books from 1730 to 1737, among the William Parsons Papers at HSP (Collection No. 470). His calculations of the width of the Delaware are in Notebook No. 4, pp. 83–86, from 1736–37. Also useful is the unpublished book by Anthony F. Wallace, “William Parsons, Proprietary Agent, 1701–1757” (ca. 1940), in typescript at APS, Ms B P 252.
11. The case for making Cotton Mather the inspiration for the Junto rests on pp. 167–74 of his Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good (which of course Franklin knew) in which Mather recommended the formation of neighborhood “societies of good men” for fostering morality and civic virtue. The problem here is that—as Mather says himself—he borrowed this idea from England, where many towns and cities had created local Societies for the Reformation of Manners. By the 1720s these societies were a familiar feature of public life in London, producing annual reports of their progress and also commissioning sermons from leading clergymen. The principal publisher of these sermons and reports in 1724–25 was a printer and bookseller, Joseph Downing, who operated from Bartholomew Close, where at that time Franklin worked for Samuel Palmer. And so it is just as plausible to argue that Franklin was directly influenced by the London model. However, the closest English parallels with Franklin’s Junto are definitely to be found in Locke and The Spectator: see below.
12. Scull’s Junto poem: Printed in Nicholas B. Wainwright, “Nicholas Scull’s Junto Verses,” in PMHB 75 (1949): 82–84. For Addison’s description of a weekly club, see Essays 8 and 9 of The Spectator, March 9–10, 1711. It seems to me that anyone who reads these essays will recognize them as a far more likely inspiration for the Junto than Mather’s Bonifacius.
13. We can be sure that the Junto members knew Gulliver’s Travels, because in September 1729 Joseph Breintnall wrote an article for The American Weekly Mercury referring to the book: specifically to Part IV, featuring the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos.
14. John Locke, Rules of a Society, in Locke, A Collection of Several Pieces (London, 1720), pp. 358–62; and Dorothy Grimm, “Franklin’s Scientific Institution,” in Pennsylvania History 23, no. 4 (October 1956): 439–43.
15. Bustill, Pearson, Decow, etc: William Whitehead, ed., Documents Relating to Colonial New Jersey, 1720–1737 (New Jersey Historical Society, 1882), Vol. 5, pp. 278–82; and Edwin Tanner, The Province of New Jersey, 1664–1738 (New York, 1908), pp. 550–51 and 689–702.
16. The book was William Sewel’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Increase of the Christian People called Quakers, first published in London in 1718.
17. Baird: AWM, May 19–26, 1726, and June 19–26, 1729; and T. Scharf, History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1884), p. 201.
18. Franklin on Thomson: Franklin to William Strahan, February 12, 1745, BFP 3, pp. 13–14. The precise date at which Franklin first read The Seasons is impossible to determine, but it must have been no later than the early 1730s because in his memoirs Franklin quotes some lines from Winter, which he used at that time as a personal prayer. Winter first went on sale in London in April 1726, three months before Franklin left for America.
19. Thomson’s Seasons and Sir Isaac Newton: For a recent account of Thomson’s scientific poetry, see Philip Connell, “Newtonian Physico-Theology and the Varieties of Whiggism in James Thomson’s The Seasons,” in Huntington Library Quarterly 72, no. 1 (March 2009), especially pp. 20–23. Thomson’s political stance was also very close to Franklin’s.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CITIZEN FRANKLIN
1. For a chronology of James Ralph’s poetic career, the best source is the diary of his friend Thomas Birch at BL, Add. Ms. 4478c, fols. 4–10. London newspaper references: Evening Post, February 13–15, 1728; and London Journal, May 11, June 1, and September 14, 1728. On the politics of The London Journal: N. R. Hanson, Government and the Press, 1695–1763 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 111–15, with a mention of Ralph on p. 120. But the best thing to do is to read the poems themselves and those of Alexander Pope—and to see The Beggar’s Opera.
2. Pope on Ralph: The Dunciad Variorum of 1729, Book III, lines 159–60, and the notes going with them. Attacks on Ralph: Grub Street Journal, May 28 and July 30, 1730, April 20, 1732, and (a reply by Ralph) May 24, 1733.
3. On his relationship with Fielding: Martin C. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (London, 1989), pp. 151–53; and on Ralph’s humiliation: Samuel Johnson’s life of Alexander Pope, in Lives of the Poets (Everyman edition, London, 1925), Vol. 2, p. 177. In the same volume is Dr. Johnson’s deeply moving life of the doomed poet Richard Savage, which takes us into the heart of the milieu that Ralph and Franklin inhabited in the London of the 1720s. James Ralph’s begging letters from the late 1730s are in Birch’s papers at the BL, Add. Ms. 4317, fols. 99, 100, 102, 104, and 106. “I am now really at my last resource….I am very serious when I say I am without money entirely and without any prospect of being otherwise”: just one example.
4. BFP 1, pp. 111–39.
5. For the source of these quotations, see the next no
te.
6. For the immigration and paper money debates of 1728–29, the principal source is the official journal of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, in Gertrude MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, Series 8, Vol. 3 (Harrisburg, PA, 1931), pp. 1909–63. In what follows I have also drawn upon Leo Lemay, “Franklin’s Suppressed ‘Busy Body,’ ” in American Literature 37, no. 3 (November 1965): 307–11; and Keith Arbour, “Benjamin Franklin’s First Government Printing,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 89, no. 5 (1999), pp. 1–90. For the political context of the 1720s and 1730s, see Alan Tully, “Benjamin Franklin and Pennsylvania Politics,” in Waldstreicher, ed., A Companion to Benjamin Franklin, especially pp. 104–11. As Professor Tully says: “Classic though it is, Franklin’s autobiographical narrative hardly supplies the most accurate guide to his early life.” Quite so. For an example of an attack on the Triumvirate: Anon, A Revisal of the Intreagues of the Triumvirate (Philadelphia, 1729), which includes on p. 4 the accusation that Andrew Hamilton was a “blasphemer” who had read an “atheistical libel” to the assembly.
7. For Pennsylvania-Lenape relations, the book I have found most helpful is Steven Craig Harper, Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase and the Dispossession of the Delawares, 1600–1763 (Bethlehem, PA, 2006), with broader context supplied by Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992), pp. 270–75. Nicholas Scull’s role as a frontier envoy and surveyor can be traced through the Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, Vols. 3 and 4 (Harrisburg, PA, 1840 and 1851).
8. The Wagon Road: Carl Bridenbaugh, The Colonial Craftsman (Chicago, 1961), pp. 22–24.