From Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, 2 August 1775
To Jane Mecom
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Philada. Aug. 2. 1775
My dear Sister
Last Night I received with great Pleasure your kind Letter of July 14. with the most agreable Additions from Mr. and Mrs. Green.4 God bless those two good ones!
The Congress has adjourned this Morning to the 5th of September. I have now upon my Hands the Settling a new General Post Office, and a Treaty to be held with the Indians on the Ohio,5 besides smaller Businesses, all to be transacted by the time the Congress meets again. Govr. Ward is just setting out, and I cannot send this by him if I enlarge.6 My Love to your Friends, from Your affectionate Brother
B Franklin
Sally and Mr. Bache send their Love and Duty. I think you had best come hither as soon as the Heats are over, i.e. sometime in September, but more of this in my next.
To / Mrs Mecom / at / The honble Judge Green’s / Warwick / per favour of Govr Ward.
4. The Greenes’ additions are printed above as separate notes, July 18.
5. For BF’s appointment as postmaster general see our editorial note above under July 26. On the 12th Congress had defined geographically three departments of Indian affairs, and the next day had elected BF, Patrick Henry, and James Wilson as commissioners for the middle one, lying between the Six Nations and the Cherokees. Henry declined to serve and was replaced; BF could not attend the subsequent meeting with the Indians, and another went in his stead. JCC, II, 175, 183, 251. His only involvement as commissioner was apparently in disbursing money for presents and other costs of the meeting; see the entries in his Memorandum Book (above, VII, 167–8) for Aug. 4, 7; Sept. 16; Oct. 4; and Nov. 12, 20. For the conference, held at Fort Pitt in September and October, see Walter H. Mohr, Federal Indian Relations 1774–1788 (Philadelphia, 1933), pp. 31–4. BF had little to do with a second conference held the next year; see the note on BF and Wilson to Yeates below, July 4, 1776.
6. Samuel Ward’s report to BF on his trip is below, Aug. 12, 1775.