From Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles, 19 December 1762
To Ezra Stiles
ALS: Yale University Library
Philada. Decr. 19. 1762
Dear Sir,
This Line is just to salute you, and acquaint you with my Return to America, Thanks to God, well and hearty. I hope you are so. With this you will receive a Thermometer which craves your Acceptance.7 With the greatest Esteem, I am, Dear Sir, Your most obedient and most humble Servant
B Franklin
Revd Mr. Stiles
7. BF had promised to send Stiles a thermometer, May 23, 1757; above, VII, 217. On Feb. 20, 1765, Stiles asked BF to forward to a scientist in St. Petersburg a series of “Thermometrical Observations” at Newport in 1764, “which your beneficence has enabled me to make.” APS. From the time he received this thermometer until his death in 1795 Stiles kept faithful records of the temperature, direction of the wind, and general condition of the weather, entering his observations several times a day. Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven and London, 1962), pp. 134–6.