To Benjamin Franklin from Count Sarsfield, [June 1767]
From Count Sarsfield6
AL: American Philosophical Society
Tuesday [June 17677]
Count Sarsfield’s compliments to Dr. Franklin and desires to know if he will be at home about Eleven, because the count can’t tomorrow have the honour to Call on him for Some material business hinders him.
6. Guy Claude, Comte de Sarsfield (1718–1789), was a French military officer of Irish ancestry, with an interest in scientific matters and a fondness for Americans. Many letters and notes between Sarsfield and BF survive from BF’s years in France. John Adams once told the count that he did not know “a greater Rider of Hobby Horses than Count Sarsfield.” L.H. Butterfield, et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), II, 381 n.
7. So dated because Sarsfield was in London during this month and was entertained at the Royal Society Club. Sir Archibald Geikie, Annals of the Royal Society Club (London, 1917), p. 99. In June 1777 he wrote BF that he remembered their meeting in London some years earlier.