From Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, 5 May 1772
To Deborah Franklin
ALS: American Philosophical Society
London, May 5. 1772
My dear Child,
I received your kind Letter of March 2. and am glad to hear that the Ship from Ireland is got safe into Antigua. I hope you will now get the little Token I sent you from thence.9
I have not receiv’d the Letter you mention to have given the young Scotsman, nor that from Mr. Craige.1
I am sorry for the Disorder that has fallen on our Friend Kinnersley, but hope he will get the better of it.2 I thank you for your Advice about putting back a Fit of the Gout. I shall never attempt such a Thing. Indeed I have not much Occasion to complain of the Gout, having had but two slight Fits since I came last to England.
I hope Mr. Bache is with you and his Family by this time, as he sailed from the Downs the latter End of February.3 My Love to him and Sally, and young Master, who I suppose is Master of the House. Tell him that Billy Hewson is as much thought of here as he can be there; was wean’d last Saturday; loves Musick; comes to see his Gran-ma; and will be lifted up to knock at the Door himself, as he has done while I was writing this at the Request of Mrs. Stevenson, who sends her Love, as Sally does her Duty. Thanks to God I continue well, and am as ever Your affectionate Husband
B Franklin
9. For the misadventures of the ship carrying Irish linen for DF see BF to DF above, Jan. 28. The disappearance of her letter of March 2, to which BF is replying, leaves us in the dark about several matters to which he refers below.
1. Possibly James Craig (1718–93), a Philadelphia merchant who appears fleetingly in the PMHB: IV (1880), 407; XCV (1971), 359.
2. The disorder, whatever it was, presumably continued into the autumn, when Kinnersley resigned from the College of Philadelphia because his health required wintering in a warmer climate: J. A. Leo Lemay, Ebenezer Kinnersley, Franklin’s Friend (Philadelphia, [1964]), pp. 105–6.
3. Bache, after an unconscionably long voyage, had reached Philadelphia only a few days before BF wrote. See BF to DF above, Feb. 18.