To Benjamin Franklin from Jabez Maud Fisher, 21 April 1777
From Jabez Maud Fisher3
AL: American Philosophical Society
Monday April 21. Rue Jacob. Hotel de la grande Bretagne Mr. Fisher presents his respectful Compliments to Dr. Franklin, and informs him that he shall set out for London on Thursday next, when if Dr. Franklin should have any Commands to his particular Friends Dr. Forthergill and Mr. Barclay or any other of his Friends, Mr. Fisher will with great Pleasure take them under his Care and deliver them with Fidelity. If Dr. Franklin should not incline to write and has any verbal Message to deliver to those Gentlemen, Mr. Fisher would do himself the honour to wait on him for that Purpose.
Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Lownds present their respectful Compliments.4
Addressed: Dr: Franklin / Passy.
Notation: Mr Fishers Note
3. A Quaker merchant in London. He had been born in Philadelphia and had three brothers there, who soon after this were arrested as Loyalists. Jabez may have shared their sympathies; in any case he lived in England, except for a brief sojourn in New York, from 1775 until his death in 1779. PMHB, IV, 408; XLI, 277. He had arrived in Paris on April 10th, and Silas Deane immediately became suspicious of the “subtle, shrewd Fellow”: Deane Papers, II, 44–5. BF doubtless knew of those suspicions when he returned his cautious reply, the following document.
4. “Lownds” was doubtless Charles Lowndes, former secretary to the treasury (above, XIII, 87 n), whose family had once occupied Fothergill’s house: R. Hingston Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends . . . (London, 1919), p. 24. Stevenson we cannot identify.