Benjamin Franklin Papers

To Benjamin Franklin from Edward Shippen, 8 February 1754

From Edward Shippen6

Letterbook copy: American Philosophical Society

To Benj: Franklin Esq:

Lancaster the 8 Feb. 1754

Dear Sir

After paying yourself for the Postage of the Inclosed Letter to Boston please to send the remainder of the Piece of 8/8 in a few [of] your best Quills (I mean English) by our Post. Some time ago I sent a six shilling bill to Doctor Shippen7 for some and he sent me feathers which he Sayd he had from Mr. Halls. If you can send me a few good ones you will much oblige Sir Your very Humble servant

ES

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

6Edward Shippen, “of Lancaster” (1703–1781), merchant and public official, was apprenticed to James Logan, whom he joined as a partner, 1732, handling fur and other internal trade; partner of Thomas Lawrence, 1749; moved to Lancaster, 1752. He was a Philadelphia common councilor, 1744, mayor of Philadelphia, 1749, and judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas; prothonotary, and judge of Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas, 1752–78; paymaster of the provincial forces and for the settlement of Braddock’s waggoners’ accounts, 1755–56. He was a founder and trustee of the College of New Jersey, 1746–67, and a member of the Union Fire Company (see above, II, 153). He subscribed to the Philadelphia Academy, was a trustee of the Juliana Library Company of Lancaster, and was a manager and assistant respectively of the Philadelphia lotteries of 1747 and 1748 (see above, III, 223, 296). Thomas Balch, ed., Letters and Papers relating chiefly to the Provincial History of Pennsylvania (Phila., 1855), pp. xxvii–xxxiii; PMHB, XXIV (1900), 261–4; XXXII (1908), 433–58; XXXIII (1909), 102–17.

7The writer’s brother William Shippen (1712–1801), physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital, member of the Continental Congress, 1778–80. PMHB, 1 (1877), 212–6.

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