To Benjamin Franklin from Jonathan Belcher, 9 July 1755
From Jonathan Belcher
Letterbook copy (incomplete): Massachusetts Historical Society
Eliza. Town (N.J.) July 9: 1755
[Missing] therefore take the Freedom of desiring you to deliver him the Inclosed and to shew him your wonted Civility with the Curiosities of your City.8 My Compliments wait on Madam Franklin and I am, Sir Your assured Friend and Servant.
Mr. Franklin
8. The “Inclosed” was undoubtedly a letter to Jonathan Belcher, Jr. (1710–1776), who was expected in Philadelphia later in the summer. After some aimless years as a lawyer in England and Ireland, he was named chief justice of Nova Scotia in recognition of his abridgment of the laws of Ireland, taking up his duties at Halifax, Oct. 11, 1754. He visited his family in Boston and Elizabeth, N.J., during the winter of 1755–56. As lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, 1761–63, his most memorable act was the exiling of the remaining Acadians. Ralph G. Lounsbury, “Jonathan Belcher, Junior, Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia,” Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews by his Students (New Haven, 1931), pp. 169–97; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, VIII, 343–64. See below, pp. 110, 111.