From Benjamin Franklin to John Rutledge, [1779?]
To John Rutledge
AL (draft): Library of Congress
[1779?]3
Sir,
The Bearer M. Savarit goes to America, with a View of establishing a House there, for Supplying the Country with Arms of various kinds of the Manufacture of Charleville,4 which is reckon’d one of the best in France: He is recommended to me as a Gentleman of excellent Character, by Persons of Distinction here; and I beg leave to recommend him to your Excellency, and to request for him your Countenance and Protection. I have the Honour to be, with great & sincere Respect, Your Excelly’s &c
To his Excellency John Rutledge Esqe Governor of South-Carolina.
3. The probable year Savarit came to America as a representative of a firm established by Pierre Penet. It was Virginia, however, not Rutledge’s South Carolina, where the arms manufactory was supposed to be established: Jefferson Papers, III, 49–50, 70, 125–47.
4. In the Ardennes. Its arms manufactory, established in 1680, was the source of the arms being supplied to the American army by the French government: XXX, 473; Larousse.