430 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



FEANKLIN'S PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



By Dr. ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLZER, 



PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



MR. FREDERICK FRALEY, who died in Philadelphia on Septem- 

 ber 23, at the age of 98 years, was the president of the oldest 

 learned society in this country, the American Philosophical Society. 

 He occupied this office longer than any other president except Benjamin 

 Franklin. Both Mr. Fraley and Dr. Franklin served for twenty-one 

 years, Franklin the first president, from 1769 until 1790, and Fraley the 

 last, from 1880 until 1901. Thomas Jefferson was president of the 

 Society for eighteen years, or from 1797 to 1815, therefore during the 

 entire time he was president of the United States. David Rittenhouse 

 served it in this capacity from 1791 until his death, and some facts in 

 the life of an organization which boasts of such early connections should 

 be recalled by a generation to whom its history is very little known. 



Behind the State House in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of 

 Independence was adopted and liberty was proclaimed throughout the 

 land, where the Continental Congress met, where the Constitution of 

 the United States was framed and the American government was 

 established, where the new Congress convened for ten years and Wash- 

 ington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Morris and the fathers of the 

 Republic were figures passing through its doors and down its corridors, 

 as familiar as the old porters and watchmen who now guard the relies 

 that are displayed there to the populace, stands a detached colonial 

 building of red brick which is almost as old as Independence Hall 

 itself. This is the Hall of the American Philosophical Society, and 

 it so closely abuts upon one wing of the State House that it seems to 

 be almost a part of it. Its rooms downstairs are hired out to-day to 

 stockbrokers, but the apartments in the two upper stories are hung with 

 interesting portraits and filled with busts and books and relics of 

 another day, a trust bequeathed to the living members by a notable 

 galaxy of men who created the Society to propagate scientific knowledge 

 in the new world. 



Nearly everything of any antiquity in Philadelphia may be traced 

 back 'to Benjamin Franklin. It was he, of course, who founded the 

 American Philosophical Society. When a young man still at work at 

 the printing trade he organized a number of his fellows into a club 

 which he called the Junto. This band of young Philadelphians met 



