Benjamin Franklin Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-43-02-0119

From Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Rush, 14 October 1784

To Benjamin Rush

ALS: Haverford College

Passy, Oct. 14. 1784

Dear Friend,

The Chevr. Castiglioni, who will deliver you this Line, is an Italian Gentleman of Character and Family, from Milan. He proposes a Tour thro’ all our States. I beg leave to recommend him to your Civilities, and that you would introduce him to the Acquaintance of such of our Society as have a Tincture of Natural History & Botany in which he is particularly curious.4 With great Esteem, I am ever, my dear Friend, Yours most affectionately

B Franklin

Dr Rush

Addressed: To / Dr Benja. Rush / Philadelphia

Notation: B: Franklin Ot: 4 1784

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

4Castiglioni embarked from Deal on April 13, 1785, and arrived in Boston on May 17, staying in America for two years. His Viaggio negli Stati Uniti dell’America Settentrionale fatto negli anni 1785, 1786, e 1787 (Milan, 1790) contained chapters about every state as well as Vermont and Canada. In the chapter on Pennsylvania, Castiglioni included part of a letter that Rush wrote to Benjamin Vaughan on April 5, 1785, describing the customs and agricultural practices of successive groups of frontier settlers in the state. Castiglioni became a member of the APS in 1786, and that same year he secured the election of BF and Rush as corresponding members of the Società Patriotica of Milan. In 1792 Castiglioni sent Rush two copies of Viaggio, one for the APS and the other for himself: Luigi Castiglioni’s Viaggio: Travels in the United States of North America, 1785–87, trans. and ed. Antonio Pace (Syracuse, N.Y., 1983), pp. xi, xxiv, xxvi, 5, 11, 230–5, 259; L. H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (2 vols., Princeton, 1951), 1, 406–7n; Antonio Pace, “The American Philosophical Society and Italy,” APS Proc, XC (1946), 395.

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