To Benjamin Franklin from Thomas Clifford, 21 October 1769
From Thomas Clifford1
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Philada. 21st Octobr. 1769.
The bearer hereof is Thomas Clifford junr.2 just going to embark for Great Britain; I have desired him to wait on thee with my kind respects; Thy Friendly Notice of him as an Inhabitant of Pennsylvania, and my Son will be very obliging to Thy Respectful Friend
Tho Clifford
Dr Benjamin Franklin
Addressed: To / Benjamin Franklin Esqr. / York Buildings / London / per favour of / T. Clifford junr
1. See above, VIII, 86 n.
2. The writer’s eldest son, who had just been given part ownership of his father’s mercantile firm at the age of twenty-one. He was making his first trip to England on the firm’s business; two years later he went again, met and married Sarah Dowell of Bristol, returned with her to America, and was promptly read out of the Philadelphia meeting for marrying a non-Quaker. He returned to Bristol in 1778, spent almost a decade there, then returned to a business partnership with his brother in Philadelphia. PMHB, V (1881), 25–6; Grace H. Larsen, “Profile of a Colonial Merchant: Thomas Clifford of Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1955), pp. 27 n, 28–30, 424.