Benjamin Franklin Papers

To Benjamin Franklin from Jonathan Belcher, 3 February 1752

From Jonathan Belcher

Letterbook copy: Massachusetts Historical Society

Eliz: Town (NJ) Febr. 3 1752

Sir

The 20th Ulti I returnd you my thanks for your kind respect in the service of your Electrical Apparatus and which I hope before this is got well to your hands.4

I am again thankfull for your Respect in yours of 25th: January.5

Mr. Samuel Smith of Burlington6 tells me the first time he goes to Philadelphia he will pay you what I am in your debt to September last for your News Paper since which I have not had it tho’ shou’d be glad of it by every Post.

I am to ask pardon for a fresh trouble I now give you in desiring you to procure for me two Pounds of the Virginia Rattle snake root on which Dr. Tennent7 who was some time agoe at Philadelphia printed several Dissertations and if you cou’d get me the quantity I have mentiond I shou’d take it very kindly and that we may get the right sort I desire you to advise with the worthy and ingenious Dr. Cadwalader8 and to whom you will give my best Compliments. If you can answer my Request in this matter I pray it may be Carefully packt up and forwarded by the first Vessel to Boston there Directed to be left with my Kinsman Mr. Ebenezer Holmes9 for my further Order and whatever may be the Cost and Charge I will thankfully pay when you will please to let me know it and am Sir Your ready Friend and Servant.

Mr. Franklin (post.)

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

4See above, p. 255.

5Not found.

6Samuel Smith (1721–1776), whom Belcher tried unsuccessfully to get appointed to the New Jersey Council, 1751; author of a history of New Jersey, 1765. On Belcher’s friendship with the Smiths of Burlington, see Albert C. Myers, ed., Hannah Logan’s Courtship (Phila., 1904), pp. 26–32, 103–5, 236–8.

7On John Tennent, see above, II, 155 n.

8Thomas Cadwalader, physician of Trenton, N.J., and Philadelphia. See above, I, 209 n.

9Possibly the Ebenezer Holmes who was several times town auditor of Boston, 1742–48, but his relationship to Belcher has not been discovered. Robert F. Seybolt, The Town Officials of Colonial Boston, 1634–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939).

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