From Benjamin Franklin to William Strahan, 26 April 1746
To William Strahan
ALS: University of Pennsylvania Library; also duplicate: Boston Public Library
Philada. April 26. 1746
Sir
I have had no Line from [you] since that dated June 1745, which, with your equal Silence to our Friends Hall and Read, made me apprehend that Death had depriv’d me of the Pleasure I promis’d myself in our growing Friendship: But Lieut. Grung4 writing in February last that you and your Family were well, convinces me that some unlucky Accident has happen’d to your Letters. I sent you in mine of December 11. and December 20.5 a List of some Books, &c. which I wanted, with a Bill for £15.7.1 Sterling and as Mr. Collinson had his Letter which I then enclos’d to you, there can be no need of Copying what I sent you. I shall expect those Books in the next Vessel that arrives from London, and send you now enclos’d another Bill for £15 Sterling.
I have not time to add but that I am with sincere Respect Your obliged humble Servant
B Franklin6
Please to forward the enclos’d to Mr. Watkins.7
4. Peter Grung, lieutenant of one of the Pennsylvania companies raised for the Cartagena expedition, 1740. Charles P. Keith, Chronicles of Pennsylvania (Phila., 1917), II, 809.
5. December 22; see above, p. 50.
6. On the duplicate BF indicated that a “Copy” (i.e. the original) had been sent “per Martyn who sail’d Ap. 26.” This duplicate is addressed “To Mr. Wm. Strahan Printer in Wine Office Court, Fleet street London via Maryland.”
7. Possibly Adrian Watkins, Edinburgh printer and bookseller, who printed an edition of the Bible in 1748. H.R. Plomer and others, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers … in England, … 1726 to 1775 (Oxford, 1932), p. 363.