X Preface. 



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 them in bulk to the British Museum, Lord 

 Palmerston, and to the successive American Ministers at the Court of 

 St. James, from 1 840-1 851. 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, re- 

 ferred 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 Govern- 

 ment 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 gth, 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 pre- 

 pared 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 Eng- 

 land, 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 



