To Benjamin Franklin from Christian Schneider, 3 April 1782
From Christian Schneider5
ALS: American Philosophical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Germantown April 3th. 1782
Sir,
Your Excellency having been pleased, to advise the Widow Anne Catharine Hacklin at Ebingen in the Dukedom of Würtenberg, that I should pay a certain Sum of money, due from me as Administrator to said Widow, into the hands of Your Excellency’s Son-in-law Mr. Richard Bache at Philadelphia, I have done according to Your Excellency’s Advise, have paid 200 pounds in specie to Mr. Richard Bache, and have received four Receipts of same Tenor and Date, of which, I take the Liberty to inclose No: 2. in this Letter.6 And having no Oportunity to acquaint said Anne Catharine Hacklin of my procedings, I humbly beseech Your Excellency, to forward the inclosed Letter to said Widow Hacklin at Ebingen in the Dukedom of Würtenberg. I am Your Excellency’s most humble and most obedient Servant
Christian Schneider.
Notation: Schneider Christian 3 apl. 1782.
5. The brother-in-law of a woman whose case was first presented by M. Auer in 1779: XXX, 189–90. In that letter, written in German, Auer spelled her name “Höklin.” In a subsequent letter (summarized in XXX, 190n) he spelled it “Höklerin.” Between those German letters, the translations of them made for BF, and contemporary misreadings of those documents, her name has appeared in a variety of ways: ibid. and XXXV, 274–5, 280. “Höklin” is the variation most similar to her brother-in-law’s anglicized spelling in the present letter (“Hacklin”).
6. Höklin’s son Frederick, who died in 1776, had saved this sum while working as a tanner for Schneider. BF had suggested that if Schneider remitted the sum to RB, BF would arrange for payment to the mother in Ebingen; see the letters cited above. RB’s signed receipt, marked by Schneider “No: 2.”, attests that on April 2 he received £200, equivalent to 1,200 guilders, for the widow. (A copy of that receipt, in an unknown hand, is also at the APS.)