From Benjamin Franklin to Richard and Sarah Bache, 19 January 1782
To Richard and Sarah Bache4
Copies: American Philosophical Society, Library of Congress, Historical Society of Princeton
Passy Jany. 19 1782
Dear Son & Daughter
This will be deliver’d you by Mr John Vaughan, son of a worthy friend of mine & a very amiable good young man. He has been some years in France & Spain Studying the two languages & acquiring commercial knowledge. His Establishmt. in America has ever been the Intention of his parents5 as well as his desire for which reason he left England soon after my arrival here & has remained on the Continent as I before mentioned. I recommend him in the most particular manner to Yr civilities and kind attention & request for him yr Counsel & protection, which may be useful to him as a Stranger.6 We are all well & I am as ever Yr. affe. Father
(signed) Franklin
Mr & Mrs Bache
(Copy)
4. This letter of recommendation was written in response to John Vaughan’s letter of Dec. 13, 1781 (above), and to a reminder which Vaughan wrote to WTF on Jan. 16 (APS). BF wrote a similar recommendation on Jan. 19 to Robert Morris (Library of Congress, APS), published in Morris Papers, IV, 79. Both letters were forwarded by WTF to Vaughan with a Feb. 18 covering letter (APS).
5. In fact his father Samuel wrote him from London on Jan. 1 insisting he go to Philadelphia (APS) and in 1783 went there himself, lodging with the Baches: Morris Papers, IV, 79n; Sarah P. Stetson, “The Philadelphia Sojourn of Samuel Vaughan,” PMHB, LXXIII (1949), 461.
6. Vaughan had an eventful voyage. He and Henry Brockholst Livingston, carrying dispatches for John Jay, sailed from Cadiz in mid-March. They were captured by a British frigate on April 25 and brought to New York as prisoners. Subsequently released on parole, Vaughan went to Philadelphia, where the Baches took him “under their protection”: Morris, Jay: Peace, pp. 252–3, 255; Vaughan to WTF, May 18, 1782 (APS).