Benjamin Franklin Papers
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From Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, 11 November 1762

To Jane Mecom

ALS: American Philosophical Society

Philada. Nov. 11. 1762.

Dear Sister,

I received your kind Letter of the 1st Instant.9 It was on that Day I had the great Happiness of finding my Family well at my own House after so long an Absence.1 I am well except a little Touch of the Gout, which my Friends say is no Disease. Cousin Benja. has been to see me as you supposed, and yesterday he return’d homewards.2 My Love to Brother Mecom and your Children.3 Excuse the shortness of this, as my Time is much taken up at present. I am, my Dear Sister, Your affectionate Brother

B Franklin

Billy stays in England a little longer. My Wife can’t write now but sends her Love.

Addressed: To / Mrs Jane Mecom / Boston / Free / B Franklin

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

9Not found.

1For BF’s voyage from England, see above, p. 115 n. Pa. Gaz., Nov. 4, 1762, reported the arrival of the Carolina on the 1st, but did not mention BF by name. London Chron., Dec. 30, 1762–Jan. 1, 1763, however, reported that on BF’s arrival “he was waited on by all ranks of people, to congratulate him on his safe return to the province, his family and friends; from whom he received the highest marks of esteem and respect, and the fullest demonstrations of the high sense they entertained, as well of his upright and disinterested conduct, in the important trust committed to his care, by the Assembly of this Government, as of his steady attention to the interest of the colonies in general during his residence in Great Britain.”

2BF’s nephew, Benjamin Mecom (C.17.3), had either recently given up his printing office in Boston, or was about to do so. He had apparently come to see BF to enlist his support for a new venture, the publication of a newspaper in N.Y. The paper, which Mecom called the New-York Pacquet, was a resounding failure; the first issue appeared on July 11, 1763, and apparently only six other issues followed. On Dec. 19, 1763, BF reported to Strahan that his nephew had “dropt his Paper.” For Mecom’s later publishing ventures, see above, IV, 355–6 n. See also BF to Strahan, Dec. 19, 1763, Pierpont Morgan Lib., and Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690–1820 (Worcester, 1947), I, 677.

3For Jane Mecom’s husband and family, see above, I, lxi–lxii.

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