From Benjamin Franklin to Joseph-Mathias Gérard de Rayneval, 22 August 1783
To Joseph-Mathias Gérard de Rayneval
LS:1 Archives du Ministère des affaires étrangères
Passy, 22. Augt 1783.
Dear Sir,
Mr Carnes2 having informed me that my Application is necessary to his obtaining a Personal Safety or Sauf Conduite, in order to afford him the Time necessary to get the Consentment of his distant Creditors, to his obtaining Lettres de Sur-seances for the space of Six Months: I hereby request you would comply with his Request, not doubting but that he is worthy of the Goodness you are pleased to shew him.
I have the honour to be, with great and sincere Esteem Dear Sir, Your most obedient & most humble Sert.
B Franklin
M. De Raynevalle
1. In the hand of WTF.
2. Burrill Carnes (b. 1761), a young merchant from Massachusetts, was currently established in Nantes. He would be named American consul in that city in 1790: Carnes to WTF, Aug. 23, 1783 (APS); George H. Lewis, “Edmund Lewis of Lynn and Some of His Descendants,” Hist. Coll. of the Essex Institute, XLIII (1907), 129; Walter B. Smith II, America’s Diplomats and Consuls of 1766–1865: a Geographic and Biographic Directory … (Washington, D.C., 1986), p. 145.