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CXCIV: TO MRS. DEBORAH FRANKLIN - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. III Letters and Misc. Writings 1753-1763 [1904]

Edition used:

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, including the Private as well as the Official and Scientific Correspondence, together with the Unmutilated and Correct Version of the Autobiography, compiled and edited by John Bigelow (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). The Federal Edition in 12 volumes. Vol. III (Letters and Misc. Writings 1753-1763).

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CXCIV

TO MRS. DEBORAH FRANKLIN

London, 1760.

My Dear Child:—

Yesterday I received your letter of February 10th, in which you mention that it was some months since you heard from me. During my journey I wrote several times to you, particularly from Liverpool and Glasgow, and since my return some very long letters, that might have been with you before your last to me, but I suppose the severe winter on your coast, among other delays, has kept the vessels out. One packet, Bonnel, was blown quite back to England.

I am sorry for the death of your black boy, as you seem to have had a regard for him. You must have suffered a great deal in the fatigue of nursing him in such a distemper. F—— has wrote me a very idle letter, desiring me not to furnish the woman, pretending to be his wife, with any thing on his account, and says the letters she shows are a forgery. But I have one she left with me, in which he acknowledges her to be his wife, and the children his, and I am sure it is his handwriting by comparing it with this he has now wrote to me and a former one. So he must be a very bad man, and I am glad I never knew him. She was sick and perishing with her children in the beginning of the winter, and has had of me in all about four guineas. What is become of her now, I know not. She seemed a very helpless body, and I found her in some falsehoods that disgusted me; but I pitied the poor children, the more as they were descended, though remotely, from our good old friends, whom you remember.

I have now the pleasure to acquaint you that our business draws near a conclusion, and that in less than a month we shall have a hearing, after which I shall be able to fix a time for my return.1 My love to all, from, dear Debby, your affectionate husband,

B. Franklin.

[1 ]The business was not concluded so soon as he anticipated. The hearing came on, but a strong opposition was made by the Proprietors’ counsel against the Pennsylvania claims.