To Benjamin Franklin from Thomas Lloyd, 2 May 1765
From Thomas Lloyd3
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Willmington on Cape Fear River
North Carolina May 2d. 1765
Dear Sir
The Assembly of this Colony having voted one hundred Pounds Sterling towards the Establishment of a Post thro the Province,4 I sometime ago at the Desire of the late Governor Dobbs5 wrote a Letter on that Subject, which he sign’d, to your Colleague Mr. Foxcroft of Virginia, requesting that the Intention of the Legislature might be carry’d into Execution—with a Hint from his Excellency that if the Sum voted shou’d prove insufficient, he beleivd an addition might be obtain’d—which from the general Sinse of its Utility and the daily increasing Necessity of such a Measure, I am very certain might be very easily accomplish’d.6
If upon Consideration you shou’d think proper to comply with the Request of the Province I beg Leave to offer my Service to conduct the Affair, in the Execution of which you may rely on all the Fidelity and Punctuality in my Power and that I shall always esteem the Favor, as an additional Instance of your Friendship and the Kindnesses conferr’d on Dear Sir Your most obedient humble Servant
Tho. Lloyd
Benj Franklin Esqr.
Addressed: To / Benjamin Franklin Esqr L:L:D / Agent for the Province of / Pennsylvania / London
Endorsed: Lloyd
3. This is apparently the Thomas Lloyd, whose name appears occasionally in the North Carolina colonial records. Lloyd seems to have been a Virginian by birth, who served with the Virginia troops under Bouquet during the French and Indian War, evidently as a physician. He was a member of the North Carolina Assembly in 1761, a justice of the peace, a nominee of Governor Tryon for the council, and a participant in the suppression of the Regulators. Whether he ever held a position in the colonial Post Office, for which he was applying in the present letter, the editors have not been able to discover.
4. Anxious to establish postal service in their colony, the members of the North Carolina Assembly in the fall of 1764 voted to pay £133 6s. 8d. Carolina currency annually to the deputy postmasters general of North America, if they would institute postal service between Williamsburg, Va., and Charleston, S.C., with stops at Edenton, Bath, New Bern, Wilmington, and Brunswick in North Carolina. W. L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, VI (Raleigh, 1888), 1057–9.
5. Arthur Dobbs (above, II, 410–11 n), governor of North Carolina since 1754, died in Carolina on March 28, 1765, while packing to go to England to recover his health.
6. In January 1765 the General Post Office established a separate American postal department for the colonies south of Virginia and appointed one Benjamin Barons, formerly the secretary to Governor Hardy of New York and then briefly collector of customs in Boston, as deputy postmaster general. Barons visited America during 1765 and 1766, but accomplished nothing, leaving North Carolina without postal service. Ruth Butler, Doctor Franklin Postmaster General (Garden City, N.Y., 1928), pp. 113–15; Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire The British Customs Service in Colonial America 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 123, 169–72, 313.