To Benjamin Franklin from Edward Bridgen, [1765–1775]
From Edward Bridgen9
AL: American Philosophical Society
None of the following notes can be dated with precision; it is possible that some may have been written during BF’s first mission, while others may have been composed as late as 1775. They are placed here because they seem to the editors to belong to the second mission, and in accordance with editorial practice because this is the earliest year in which they are likely to have been written during that mission—Franklin was, it is true, in England during the last three weeks of 1764 but he was “severely handled by a most violent Cold”1 and hence was unlikely to have written or received many invitations or similar brief notes during that period.
Pater Noster Row Monday Morn [1765–1775]
Mr. Bridgen’s Compliments to Dr: Franklin and begs the favour that he will send per the bearer the map he was so kind to promise him.
9. Edward Bridgen (d. 1787), F.R.S., 1777, treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries, alderman of London, son-in-law of Samuel Richardson, was a merchant of Paternoster Row, whose firm, Bridgen & Waller, did a large American business, especially with South Carolina, through which he made the acquaintance of Henry Laurens and William Henry Drayton. Among Bridgen’s other American friends was John Adams, with whom he visited Thomas Brand Hollis’ estate in Essex in 1786. The exact period from which his friendship with BF dates is not known. See Gent. Mag., LVII (1787), 646; DNB (under Samuel Richardson); L. H. Butterfield et al, eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), III, 179–80, 188, 196–200.
1. See above, XI, 534.