Benjamin Franklin Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-43-02-0077

To Benjamin Franklin from James Hutton, 15 September 1784

From James Hutton

ALS: American Philosophical Society

Ockbrook near Derby Sept. 15. 1784

Dear old friend

Being at Derby on a Visit I recieve here your kind Lr. of Aug. 18 which your Grandson Left at my House, Pimlico,5 & my Servant sent after me. I should be glad to see him & shew him that Respect every one related to you has a right to claim from me. The best News, in your Letter, for me is that your malady is tolerable and I wish it may never be long otherwise. I claim a Share in whatever relates to your Person, your kindnesses to me and mine have made me happy in the midst of a sad set of Circumstances which are now over. We send every year a Vessel still to Labradore to carry Provisions & Cloathing to our people settled on 3 Different Parts of the Coast,6 the Country being as yet utterly incapable of Cultivation. Our great concern last year was, that some English settled on a Fishing Plan more to the South, had enticed some hundred of the Eskimaux to go & visit them, to the great Loss of their time & damage to their beginning moral good behaviour, and hindrance in their providing by fishing & hunting their winter food by that Loss of time at the English Settlements, and I have reason to fear many of them have perished by famine on that occasion. Another bad thing in these courses is that they get Fire arms from those English, & take it ill of us that we will never put arms into their hands, of no real use to them.

I send this in a Frank to your Grandson & hope it will find him in Town.7

I beg my Comps. at Passy & am Dear old Friend your most obliged & most obedient & affectionate

Hutton

I suppose I shall be in Town again in the first week in October.

Addressed: Dr Franklin / Passy

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

5WTF mentioned delivering this in the postscript to his Sept. 7 letter, above.

6The Moravian missions at Nain, Okak, and Arvertok: William H. Whiteley, “The Moravian Missionaries and the Labrador Eskimos in the Eighteenth Century,” Church History, XXXV (1966), 80, 84, 86.

7Hutton wrote to WTF the same day, Sept. 15, explaining that he would be out of town (“120 miles from London”) for at least another fortnight. He urged WTF to call on Dorothea Blunt and Mary Hewson, and asked him to forward the enclosed letter to BF. APS.

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