To Benjamin Franklin from John Tunnicliff, 21 December 1766
From John Tunnicliff8
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Langley Lodge, Near Derby
Dec. the 21st. 1766.
Honoured Sir
I Received your kind Letters for which I return you my Best Thanks.9 If I can get a good Plantation either in Pensylvania or the Jerseys provided the same, is in a good Neighbourhood and the House High and Ary Sittuation to render it Healthy and near the River Delaware or the River Schoolkill with sufficiant Meadow and Pasture of the White Honey-Suckle, Grass Sufficiant for Summering and Wintering Twenty Milking Cows if such a Plantation should come to your Knowledge Please to let me know of it but I Beg you will give yourself no trouble of making Enquiry as I shall not have it in my Power to render you any Amends, from your Friend and, Humble Servant,
John Tunnicliff
I am sure you did not Receive the Woodcocks According to Expectation.1
I have Spoke to the Book keeper of the Coach who Saith he will make me Satisfaction if you do not Receive them in the Mean Time. I Beg your Exception of a Woodcock and Partridge.
Addressed: To / Benjamin Franklin Esqr. / at Mrs. Stephensons / Craven Street the Strand / London
8. Described by John Whitehurst of Derby in 1763 as “a farmer of good Credit, from this neighborhood,” Tunnicliff had gone to Philadelphia in 1763 with a view to settling as a farmer in America, but had returned to England by 1765; above, X, 277, 296, 300; XII, 109.
9. No previous letters between BF and Tunnicliff have been found.
1. In October 1765 Tunnicliff had sent BF a hare “as a grateful acknowledgment of the favors confer’d upon him,” according to Whitehurst. It was forwarded by the Derby stage to the coaching inn called The Swan with Two Necks, situated in Lad Lane, London; above, XII, 326–7. Probably the missing woodcocks and the gifts mentioned later in this postscript traveled by the same route. One may hope that the later remembrances reached their intended destination, but no note of thanks from BF to Tunnicliff has been found to settle the point.