To Benjamin Franklin from William Dewees, Jr., 26 January 1740
From William Dewees, Jr.1
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Janry. the 26th 1739/40
Sir
I Sent you Last week 7½ Reemes of Large Printing Paper and 8 Reemes of Brown Ditto and Now Send you by the Same Barrer 12 Ditto of Corse printing which I would have you Place to the Cr. of Yours
Wm. Dewees Jnr
To Mr. Benjn Franklin this
1. William Dewees, Jr. (c. 1712–1777), operated a paper mill in Cresham township on the Wissahickon near Philadelphia after 1736. BF’S accounts with him are in Ledger D (see above, p. 232). Dewees was a son of William Dewees (1677–1745), who built a paper mill near Germantown in 1710, the second in America. Dard Hunter, Papermaking in Pioneer America (Phila., 1952), pp. 41–2; Lyman H. Weeks, A History of Paper-Manufacturing in the United States, 1690–1916 (N.Y., 1916), pp. 10–11; Ellwood Roberts, ed., The Dewees Family (Norristown, Pa., 1905), pp. 21–35, 86–7.