To Benjamin Franklin from Lord Rosehill, 9 June 1784
From Lord Rosehill1
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Rouen 9th. June 1784
Sir—
I reced. Your Obligeing Information Concerning Your Son,2 I am again to bege the favour of You to be so Good as to Informe me by the Return of the Post if there are Any Gentlemen of Note, belonging to the State of Virginia, at this time in Paris, & if there is, then Names, and Addresse.— Haveing a Very Conciderable Interest in New Jersey,3 I will do my self the Pleasure of Waiting on You, the first time I come to Paris, which I imagine will be about the, First of Jully— In the Mean time beleave me to be Your Most Obed Hble Sert
Rosehill
Notation: Hill 9 June 1784
1. David Carnegie (1749–1788) was the heir to the earldom of Northesk but predeceased his father, the sixth earl. After resigning his commission in the British army, in 1768 he went to Philadelphia, where he entered into a bigamous marriage with Margaret Cheer, the well-known female lead of the American Theatre Company. The couple was arrested for debt, parted ways, and by early 1776 Lord Rosehill was on his way back to England. Nothing is known of him in the subsequent years except that he died in Rouen without issue: James B. Paul, ed., The Scots Peerage … (9 vols., Edinburgh, 1904–14), VI, 503; Susan Rather, “Miss Cheer as Lady Rosehill: a Real-Life Drama in Late-Colonial British America,” Theatre Notebook, LXIV (2010), 82–95; Pa. Gaz., Feb. 11, 1768; Peter Force, ed., American Archives …, Fourth Series (6 vols., [Washington, D.C., 1837–46]), V, 1375. How much BF knew of the scandal is not known, but his wife had reported the news of Rosehill’s marriage and arrest in a letter to SB of Aug. 23, [1768] (Yale University Library).
2. Neither Lord Rosehill’s initial letter to BF nor the reply has been located.
3. Where, in 1773, Lord Rosehill had been one of the incorporators of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church of Spotswood. As royal governor of the colony, WF had signed the church’s charter: W. W. Clayton, History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey … (Philadelphia, 1882), pp. 760, 778.