To Benjamin Franklin from Amos Strettell: Statement of Account, 21 October 1776: résumé
From Amos Strettell: Statement of Account9
AD: American Philosophical Society
<Monday, October 21, 1776: George McCleave gave mortgages, dated respectively May 13 and December 18, 1762, to the executors of Robert Strettell’s estate. On the first mortgage McCleave paid one year’s interest, £3 12s., and on the second none. Between November 27, 1765, and May 17, 1768, Mrs. Franklin paid £36 for interest on both mortgages, and in 1772 John Foxcroft paid £33 19s. The balance due for the four years thereafter is £28 16s.
Amos Strettell hopes that this “Scetch” will answer Franklin’s purposes, and inquires of him whether he, or the late partnership of Franklin & Hall, has a claim on the estate of Robert Strettell, or on the late partnership of Robert and Amos Strettell, or on the latter alone.>
9. For the background of the account, which was due from the Post Office, see above, XI, 469 n. We cannot explain the disparity, amounting to one year’s interest on the two mortgages, between the sum of £21 12s. noted there as owed to the Strettell estate and the £28 16s. that is mentioned here. Neither have we any idea of what claim BF, or he and his erstwhile partner, might have had on the Strettells.