To Benjamin Franklin from Charles Wilcox, 8 November 1773
From Charles Wilcox
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Bristol 8th, Nov’r. 1773.
Sir
Your very Polite and Esteem’d Favor of the 5th Current, came in Course of Post yesterday, Inclosing Me one for Anto. Stewart Esqr. for which you have my Thanks.4 It will always give Me Pleasure to be Serviceable to you here. You will give Me leave to acquaint you that the Concord Capt. Volans for Philadelphia will sail from hence about the 12th Jany. Any Letters you have for that Place shall be duly taken care of, or any Thing Else you are pleas’d to reccommend to Me, be Assured Sir nothing will give Me greater Pleasure than to have very frequent Opportunitys to convince you how much I esteem you, and I beg leave in Haste to Say that I am very Respectfully Dear Sir Your most Obedient and Obliged Humble Servant
Chas: Wilcox
Benj. Franklin Esqr
Addressed: Benjn Franklin Esqr LLD / Craven Street, / London
4. BF’s missing letter of the 5th was undoubtedly in answer to Wilcox’s inquiry above, Sept. 13, about an estate in Maryland, and enclosed another letter in which BF passed on the question to the Annapolis postmaster. This was the Mr. Stewart whom we did not identify above, XVI, 185; he held the post at least from 1764 to 1774: Md. Gaz., Nov. 1, 1764; Sept. 8, 1774. He was a Scot, the son of an Edinburgh attorney; see a genealogical fragment in All Hallows Parish Register (Maryland Hall of Records), I, 56–7, for which we are indebted to Mrs. Bryce Jacobsen, archivist. Stewart was a merchant and shipowner in Annapolis, who the next year acquired unwanted prominence when his brig was burned because it carried tea; he later became a Loyalist, lost his estate, and petitioned for land in Nova Scotia. “Account of the Destruction of the Brig ‘Peggy Stewart’ at Annapolis, 1774,” PMHB, XXV (1901), 248–54; Gipson, British Empire, XII, 197–8; Sabine, Loyalists, II, 332–3.