To Benjamin Franklin from James Logan, 13 December 1749
From James Logan
Letterbook abstract: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
10br [December] 13 [1749]
My Friend
I wrote to him1 that Lewis Evans has been here yesterday to advise of T. Godfrey’s Decease2 which I supposed had prevented his coming today the last he had appointed but that to morrow was a new one and that he might apply to my Son for his Charges.3 Some here would be pleased to see his Experiments4 [two words illegible].
To B. Franklin
1. That is, BF. Logan usually recorded only the substance of very short letters, referring to the addressee in the third person.
2. Pa. Gaz., Dec. 19, 1749, reporting that Godfrey (see above, I, 190 n) had died “last week,” declared he “had an uncommon Genius for all kinds of Mathematical Learning, with which he was extreamly well acquainted.”
3. The charges may have been for Evans’ drafting Logan’s deed of trust for his library. See Logan to John Kinsey, Nov. 24, Dec. 13, 1749, Letterbook, Hist. Soc. Pa.; Edwin Wolf, 2nd, “The Romance of James Logan’s Books,” 3 Wm. and Mary Quar., XIII (1956), 348.
4. The references may be to experiments by BF or by Evans, who made experiments in electricity, and in 1751 lectured on natural philosophy, including electricity, at New York, Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia. Lawrence H. Gipson, Lewis Evans (Phila., 1939), pp. 9–10.