To Benjamin Franklin from ――― Haineville, 3 August 1777: résumé
From ––– Haineville
ALS: American Philosophical Society
<August 3, 1777, in French: Her son has been captured on an English vessel and later imprisoned in Boston; she asks for a quarter-hour in which to explain how he got there and why he is kept from returning to see her before she dies, and signs herself “femme haineville.”7>
[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]
7. BF apparently gave her some encouragement. On Aug. 10 she wrote again, as he had suggested, this time from Paris, to beg his protection for her son (who with it might stay in America), to expatiate on the young man’s virtues, and to enclose a letter for him. APS.