To Benjamin Franklin from Lois Killcup, 10 June 1776
From Lois Killcup8
ALS: American Philosophical Society
June 10 1776
Docr. you will be surprisd to see this from an old frind bute the grate love wee had for you and your brother9 that when wee heard from time to time of honering conferd on you gave us such pleasure as I Doubte not you wolud [would] feel by puting out a litel finger to a find passing by. Doctr. our finds and relasons are gone from us.
Mr. Killcup has lost his mery thou [memory though] not his reson cante write his name. Docr. I hope you will see mr. bante a gentlman that is gone to mr. hancock which I should have wrote by but hard [heard] you was out a toune. Hee is a gentleman worth your notes you will admire him. He mared [married] mr. Leewis Dauter.1 Doct. I should not have seente you such a naked Leter had thar noot been such a frind as mr. bant for you to see and tell you all. I am Sir with the hiest regard and grateis respet your frind
Lois Killcup
Addressed in another hand: To / The Honbl: / Benjamin Franklin Esqr / Philadelphia
8. Mrs. Killcup or Kilcup (1702–90) was a native of Lynn who had married in sequence two Bostonians; the second, Dudson Killcup, was a merchant who died at the age of seventy-five in March, 1779. New England Hist. and Geneal. Register, V (1851), 327; Ogden Codman, Index of Obituaries in Boston Newspapers, 1704–1800 (3 vols., Boston, 1968), I, 182.
9. Undoubtedly John Franklin, whose will Dudson Killcup had witnessed. Van Doren, Franklin—Mecom, p. 51.
1. William Bant (c. 1739–80) was a lawyer, merchant, and business associate of Hancock, and during the latter’s absence in Philadelphia was managing his affairs in Boston. In 1765 Bant had married Mary Anna Lewis, who was related to the Killcups. Bant’s trip to Philadelphia was to escort Katherine Quincy, Hancock’s sister-in-law, who wanted to be with Mrs. Hancock at her lying in. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, IX, 550–1; Mass. Hist. Soc., Proc., LIV (1922), 219; Samuel A. Green, Groton Hist. Series (4 vols., Groton, Mass., 1887–99), I, no. 13, p. 60; Herbert S. Allan, John Hancock . . . (New York, 1948), pp. 210, 224, 241; William T. Baxter, The House of Hancock . . . (Cambridge, Mass., 1945), pp. 241–2, 282, 287–8.