Dr. Franklin seems to have contracted, early in life, the habit of preserving his correspondence, drafts of letters, and memoranda of all kinds, and the mass which he accumulated during his long and active career was very large. In his last Will, dated July 17th, 1788, he bequeathed his manuscripts and papers to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, who used them in preparation of "The Life and Writings" of his grandfather. These manuscripts and papers William Temple Franklin stored at Champlost, the country seat near Philadelphia, of his friend George Fox. A portion of them he subsequently took to Europe for use in the completion of this work which he published in six volumes in London in 1817-1818.

William Temple Franklin died in Paris on May 25th, 1823, and by his Will gave the papers and manuscripts which he had inherited from his grandfather to George Fox, and upon the death of the latter, his children, Charles P. Fox and Mary Fox, in July, 1840, deposited the collection with The American Philosophical Society, and later, on September 17th of the same year, formally gave them to this Society.

In the transfer there was overlooked a small portion of the Franklin papers which had become mixed with the Fox family papers also stored in the loft of the stable at Champlost. About twenty-two years later, when this loft was being cleaned out and the papers therein were being carred off to the paper mill, a small lot of them, most of which had originally belonged to the Franklin collection, was rescued from destruction by Mrs. Holbrook, a friend and at the time house-guest of Miss. Fox, to whom they were then given. In 1903 these were purchased from her descendants by friends of the University of Pennsylvania, and presented to its Library.

Before making the gift to the American Philosophical Society, upwards of one hundred letters, for the most part to Dr. Franklin from members of his family, were separated from the collection and presented by Charles P. Fox to Dr. Franklin Bache, a great-grandson of Dr. Franklin, and are now in possession of his son, Dr. Thomas Hewson Bache. Most of these were printed by William Duane in an octavo volume of one hundred and ninety-five pages, published in New York in 1859, by C. Benjamin Richardson.

The papers taken abroad by William Temple Franklin have a less clear history. For some years they were in the possession of a tailor in St. James's Street, London, over whose shop he had lodgings, and in the year 1840 were found by a gentleman who had been a fellow-lodger there with him, "roughly bundled-up" on the top shelf of a closet in an upper room which William Temple Franklin had occupied. This gentleman, an officer under the British Government, kept these manuscripts for ten or eleven years, according to Henry Stevens, and from time to time offered time in bulk to the British Museum, Lord Palmerston, and to the successive American Ministers at the Court of St. James, from 1804-1851. In the latter year they were offered to Hon. Abbott Lawrence, at that time American Minister in London, who, having no authority to purchase them for his Government, referred the owner to Henry Stevens as a likely buyer, and he, three days later, purchased the entire collection.

Mr. Stevens repaired and arranged the papers, and added to them a number of Dr. Franklin's printed works and imprints, and finally in 1882 the entire collection was purchased from him by the Government of the United States, at the instigation of the then Secretary of State, the Honorable James G. Blaine, and was deposited in the Library of the Department of State. Later, under the Executive Order of March 9th, 1903, all the manuscripts and papers in this collection, with the exception of the diplomatic records, were transferred to the Library of Congress. A Calendar of the Stevens collection was prepared under the direction of Mr. Worthington C. Ford, Chief of the Division of Manuscripts, and was published in 1905 by the Library of Congress.

So far as is known, these four collections constitute the whole of the remaining papers of Dr. Franklin, although others may be in existence, for before Philadelphia was occupied by the British in 1777, a large chest filled with his most valuable early papers, including the drafts of his letters for twenty years, covering the whole period of his residence in England, was sent for safe keeping to Joseph Galloway's home at Trevose, near Bristol, Pennsylvania. During the military operations around Philadelphia, the British visited Mr. Galloway's house, broke open this chest and rifled its contents. After the evacuation of this part of the country by the British forces, Richard Bache, Dr. Franklin's son-in-law, hearing of the condition of these papers, went to Trevose and collected the scattered, mud-bespattered, and much injured remnants of the contents of the chest, and removed them to Philadelphia. It seems most likely that all of the papers that were then lost were ruthlessly destroyed, for if any of them were still in existence they would probably have come to light before this time.

The collection, as it now stands, is divided up approximately as follows:

Frontispiece

American Philosophical Society	13,800 pieces (78 per cent.)
The Stevens Collection in the Library of Congress	2,938 pieces (16.6 per cent.)
The University of Pennsylvania	840 pieces (4.8 per cent.)
Dr. T. Hewson Bache	100 pieces (.6 per cent.)
Total	16,678 pieces (100 per cent.)

This completes the history, so far as is known, of the papers preserved by Dr. Franklin, and with the publication of the present Calendar all of them are made readily available to the student of American history.

In preparing this Calendar the Editor has adhered to the spelling of proper names as given in the original manuscripts and has, when it seemed desirable, endeavored to supply omissions in the letters so as to promote the clear understanding of the text, all such additions have been enclosed within [ ], while in the Index he has sought to give such information as would enable the reader to identify the authors of the letters and the persons mentioned therein. Letters which have been published in full elsewhere, have been scantily calendared in these volumes, and a footnote reference given to the publication in which they appear in extenso.

The very full Index, which accompanies these volumes, it is hoped will render their contents readily available for reference.

The Editor takes pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness for valuable assistance received from many sources in the preparation of this Calendar, and especially to Mrs. Lightner Witmer for the admirable manner in which she had calendared a very considerable portion of the correspondence, and to Miss Rebecca Edmiston Kirkpatrick for the conscientious and painstaking labor with which she has assisted in the passage of the work through the press, and in the preparation of the Index.

I.M.H.
PHILADELPHIA,
September, 1908.

Hays Calendar part 1: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1730-1767	412 items
Hays Calendar part 1: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1768-1776	663 items
Hays Calendar part 2: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1777 January-August	555 items
Hays Calendar part 2: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1777 September-1778 March	666 items
Hays Calendar part 3: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1778 April-September	690 items
Hays Calendar part 3: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1778 October-December	715 items
Hays Calendar part 4: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1779 January-May	521 items
Hays Calendar part 4: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1779 June-November	553 items
Hays Calendar part 5: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1779 December-1780 May	524 items
Hays Calendar part 5: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1780 June-December	553 items
Hays Calendar part 6: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1781 January-December	687 items
Hays Calendar part 6: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1782 January-December	582 items
Hays Calendar part 7: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1783 January-May	436 items
Hays Calendar part 7: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1783 June-November	396 items
Hays Calendar part 8: Letters to Franklin	1783 December-1785 May	780 items
Hays Calendar part 9: Letters to Franklin (section I)	1783-1786	424 items
Hays Calendar part 9: Letters to Franklin (section II)	1787-1789	395 items
Hays Calendar part 10: Letters to Franklin, receipts, bills	1790 January-April, n.d.	315 items
Hays Calendar part 11: Letters from Franklin	1733-1789	711 items
Hays Calendar part 12: Miscellaneous Franklin items (section I)	1640-1778	605 items
Hays Calendar part 12: Miscellaneous Franklin items (section II)	1779-1791	758 items

None.

Gift of Charles Pemberton Fox, 1840.

Cite as: Benjamin Franklin Papers, American Philosophical Society.

recatalogued and encoded by rsc, April 2003.

This guide is a partially updated version of I. Minis Hays, Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia: APS, 1908).