This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description . The materials listed here are not held at the APS.

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

This is part of the large inventory for the Benjamin Franklin Papers (Mss B F85). For complete information concerning this collection, please view the Collection Description .

The Lusanna, a seventy-ton brigantine, was owned by Elisha Doane of Massachusetts, and sailed with his son-in-law Shearjashub Bourne as supercargo. She sailed from Massachusetts in 1775 at the onset of the American Revolution. On the return voyage from London in 1777 she was captured by the privateer McClary out of Portsmouth, NH. In the prize case that followed in the New Hampshire maritime court, Bourne and Doane unsuccessfully tried to defend their ship. Their appeal eventually made its way to the Continental Congress. The Lusanna Prize Case Records is a written transcript of the proceedings in Admiralty Court of the armed brigantine McClary vs. the brigantine Lusanna in the State of New Hampshire. The transcript contains the entire proceedings of the case including the libel, statements of the crew and passengers, invoices for items shipped aboard the Lusanna, bills of lading, copies of letters pertaining to the voyage and cargo, copy of the prize case against the Industry (another vessel owned by Doane captured by the British in 1775), testimony in support of the owners of the Lusanna as loyal to the United States, the decision of the court, and the appeal.

This volume is a daily record of purchases of books, paper, quills, ink, and other stationer's supplies. Customers include prominent Philadelphians.

The Peale family is best known as a family of artists; however, family interests and activities were much more wide-ranging. The best known Peale is Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827, APS 1786), who produced more than one thousand paintings, including hundreds of portraits of leading Americans during the colonial and early national periods. Peale was married three times, to Rachel Brewster (1744-1790), Elizabeth de Peyster (1765-1804), and Hannah More (1755-1821). He had eighteen children, eleven of whom reached adulthood. Three of Charles Willson Peale's sons became artists: Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825), Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), and Rubens Peale (1784-1865). A fourth son, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885, APS 1833), was a naturalist (who made drawings on the exploring expeditions he accompanied) and pioneer in photography, and another son, Benjamin Franklin Peale (1795-1870), became a naturalist and paleontologist. Peale's daughter Sophonisba Angusciola was married to Coleman Sellers (1781-1834), an inventor and manufacturer of machinery, including locomotives. Two of their sons, George Escol Sellers (1808-1899) and Coleman Sellers (1827-1907, APS 1872), were inventors and engineers. The latter served as director of the construction of the hydro-electric power development at Niagara Falls. He was married to Cornelia Wells Sellers (1831-1909). One of their grandsons was Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980, APS 1979), a librarian and historian and the author of several studies of the Peale family, including a Charles Willson Peale biography.

Containing over 4 linear feet of letters and documents, the Franklin-Bache Papers comprises the second largest collection of letters and documents relating to Benjamin Franklin in the APS Library. Although the scope of the collection is broad, including materials from the time of Franklin's arrival in Philadelphia to his death, the heart of the collection documents the period of Franklin's ministry in France (1776-1785) and his diplomatic efforts to win financial and military support for the revolutionary cause, as well as less intensive coverage of his ministry in England before the Revolution. Franklin's correspondence with American and French officials, financiers (personal and otherwise), and savants provides tantalizing details on the social context of Franklin's ministry in France, his intellectual life, and his growing celebrity. Much of the correspondence documents the efforts to convince French officials early in the war to support the American cause, but there is valuable material relating to the peace negotiations as well. The collection is equally rich in personal correspondence, including a rich set of letters from Mary Stevenson Hewson, Georgiana Shipley, Catherine Ray Greene, Jane Mecom, Deborah Franklin, and a number of Franklin's other relatives. The collection is arranged chronologically.

Though the Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection is composed of items that do not fall readily into any other existing collection, the two dominant intellectual areas represented in the collection are Early American History and History of Science.

Since publication of I. Minis Hays's Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in 1908, the APS Library has acquired a large number of miscellaneous letters and other documents relating to the life, mind, and work of Franklin and his immediate family. The collections listed in this finding aid consist of letters and documents to and from Franklin organized into groupings based upon provenance or focal point. The largest grouping consists of miscellaneous materials acquired individually or in small groups over the years, including a number of important individual items. The other collections consist largely of correspondence between Franklin and individual friends and colleagues, including his friends Mme Brillon, Mary "Polly" Stevenson Hewson, and Catherine Ray Greene, the Whig agriculturist Richard Jackson, and the printer Francis Childs. The collections include photostats of selected materials held by other institutions or that were in private hands. These are available for reference only.

The collection of Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980) contains copious and detailed documentation of the art of Charles Willson Peale and his family. It consists of working files for Sellers's numerous publications, including his Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale (1952); Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace (1969); C. W. Peale's Portraits of Washington (1951); Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (1962); Mr. Peale's Museum (1980). Most files include photographs of the art work, notes on the piece, and correspondence with authorities or owners. Other series include one relating to the paintings of various other Peales, including Anna C., James, Mary Jane, Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Sarah Miriam, and a miscellaneous artist file, which includes the same type of material and information on many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists, including Thomas Eakins, George Healy, Robert Edge Pine, William Rush, Thomas Sully, Benjamin West, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, etc. There is a separate Sellers collection at Dickinson College, primarily personal in nature.