Authors: Jill Lepore
36.
BF,
Autobiography,
1.
37.
“The Author to her Book,” in Bradstreet,
Several Poems,
236.
38.
“Before the Birth of one of her Children” in Bradstreet,
Several Poems,
239. On Bradstreet’s children and her manuscripts, see Hall,
Ways of Writing,
36.
39.
On the giving of gloves and rings, see Steven C. Bullock, “ ‘Often concerned in funerals’: Ritual, Material Culture, and the Large Funeral in the Age of Samuel Sewall,” in
New Views of New England: Studies in Material and Visual Culture, 1680–1830
(Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, forthcoming), 181–211, and Steven C. Bullock and Sheila McIntyre, “The Handsome Tokens of a Funeral: Glove-Giving and the Large Funeral in Eighteenth-Century New England,”
William and Mary Quarterly
69 (2012): 305–46, in which Turell’s funeral is discussed. After 1742, gifts other than gloves to the pallbearers and ministers were outlawed; the ban, however, was frequently ignored.
40.
Turell,
Memoir,
33.
41.
Benjamin Colman’s own papers are preserved at the MHS, in several collections: Benjamin Colman Papers, Letters to Benjamin Colman, and Benjamin Colman Letters. Letters from Benjamin Colman to Jane Colman Turell can be found in the Benjamin Colman Papers, Box 1. “You are always in my heart & mind,” Colman wrote his daughter when she was melancholy. He sent her two oranges and promised to visit as soon as the weather improved. (Benjamin Colman to Jane Colman Turell, March 6, 1729, Benjamin Colman Papers, Box 1.) He and his wife were greatly concerned for their daughter’s health. “We beg of you … that if you be going with child again, that you keep your self hid, & don’t ride about, no not down to us, & if you have a fancy for any thing speak or write.” (Benjamin Colman to Jane Colman Turell, January 16, 1730, Benjamin Colman Papers, Box 1.) Colman’s correspondence with Ebenezer Turell, after Jane Colman’s Turell’s death in 1735, can also be found in Box 1; it concerns matters relating to her funeral.
42.
On
women’s writing as a “domestic archive” (as distinct from national history or national memory), see Stabile,
Memory’s Daughters,
especially the introduction, “The Genealogy of Memory,” and the conclusion, “The Ruins of Time”; on mourning and remains, see chapter 4, “In Memoriam.”
43.
Cotton Mather,
Right Thoughts in Sad Hours
(London: James Astwood, 1689), 49. On
Puritan death and burial, see David E. Stannard,
The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), especially chapters 3 and 5; Gordon E. Geddes,
Welcome Joy: Death in Puritan New England
(Ann Arbor: UMI, 1976, 1981), especially chapters 5 and 6; and Laurel K. Gabel, “Death, Burial, and Memorialization in Colonial New England: The Diary of Samuel Sewall,”
Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies
25 (2008): 8–43.
44.
John Flavel,
A Token for Mourners; or, The Advice of Christ to a Distressed Mother,
bewailing the Death of her Dear and Only Son
(Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1730). This late-seventeenth-century mourning advice book was written in England and printed in Boston in various editions, beginning in 1707. Editions appeared in Boston in 1725, 1729, and 1730. Flavel ignores how, at the death of Lazarus, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
1.
BF to Sarah Franklin Davenport, Philadelphia, [June?], 1730. Sarah Franklin Davenport had evidently written to Franklin in May of that year.
2.
JFM to BF, December 30, 1765.
3.
BF to Sarah Franklin Davenport, Philadelphia, [June?], 1730.
4.
BF, “Old Mistresses Apologue,” June 25, 1745,
PBF,
3:30–31.
5.
BF,
Autobiography,
56.
6.
Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
chapter 2.
7.
BF,
Autobiography,
55.
8.
BF, “Apology for Printers,” June 10, 1731,
PBF,
1:194–95.
9.
BF to JFM, June 19, 1731.
10.
Jane’s son Edward Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on April 4, 1731, by Samuel Cooper. Only Edward Mecom is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
153.
11.
BF to JFM, June 19, 1731.
12.
Benjamin Mecom (listed as “Mecum”) was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on December 31, 1732, by Samuel Cooper. Only “Edward Mecum” is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
155.
13.
JFM to DRF, March 17, 1760.
14.
JFM to Jane Mecom Collas, May 16, 1778. Calling children “little rogues” appears to have been commonplace. See the remarks quoted in Norton,
Liberty’s Daughters,
93.
15.
JFM to BF, June 25, 1782.
16.
BF,
Autobiography,
79.
17.
Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
104.
18.
Editorial comment in
PBF,
2:127.
19.
BF,
Poor Richard Improved, 1758, PBF,
7:350.
20.
Robert Newcomb, “The Sources of Benjamin Franklin’s Sayings of Poor Richard” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1957), 65, 77, 32. Thomas Fuller,
Gnomologia
(London, 1732), 11. BF,
Poor Richard Improved, 1749, PBF,
3:348. Titan Leeds,
The American Almanack
.… BF,
Poor Richard, 1736, PBF,
2:142. And see also Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
chapter 6.
21.
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 15, 1811.
22.
BF,
Poor Richard, 1733, PBF,
1:311.
23.
BF,
Poor Richard, 1736, PBF,
2:136.
1.
Richard Steele, comp.,
The Ladies Library,
4th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1732). JFM’s copy of volume 3 of the 1732 edition of
The Ladies Library
is at the AAS.
2.
“Notes for a History of the Library Company of Philadelphia,” in Samuel Hazard, ed.,
Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania
16 (September 26, 1835), 202.
3.
In 1733, BF printed a catalog of the holdings of the Library Company, but no copy survives. What that catalog must have listed has, however, been carefully reconstructed. See Edwin Wolf, “The First Books and Printed Catalogues of the
Library Company of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
78 (1954): 45–70. Wolf lists neither
The Ladies Library
nor
Gnomologia
.
4.
[London]
Monthly Catalogue,
October 1732, 375.
The Ladies Library
(1732) appears in
A Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Library Company of Philadelphia
(Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1741), 46. By 1734, the 1732 duodecimo edition of
The Ladies Library
was among the holdings of the Library Company. That copy was ordered November 13, 1734, and received on April 18, 1735 (James N. Green, e-mail to the author, March 8, 2012). By 1738, Franklin was selling imported editions of
The Ladies Library
in his shop; see the ad in the
Pennsylvania Gazette,
May 25, 1738. On sending it to readers, see BF to John Ladd, June 12, 1738. Later, BF also recommended the book to his daughter, writing to his wife, “
Sally’s last Letter to her Brother is the best wrote that of late I have seen of hers. I only wish she was a little more careful of her
Spelling. I hope she continues to love going to Church, and would have her read over and over again the whole Duty of Man and the Lady’s Library.” BF to DRF, London, February 19, 1758. Sally was fourteen when Franklin wrote this letter.
5.
BF,
Autobiography,
63.
6.
James N. Green believes that while in New England in the summer and fall of 1733 Franklin visited Thomas Cox’s Boston shop (Green, e-mail to the author, March 8, 2012). On April 30, 1733, Cox placed an ad in the Boston
Weekly Rehearsal:
“Just arrived (
per
Capt.
Shepardson
) a very curious
Collection
of the best and most valuable
Books,
in all Arts and Sciences, to be sold at the Shop of
T. Cox,
Bookseller, at the
Lamb
on the South side of the Town-House in
Boston,
at the very lowest Prices for
ready Money
.”
The Ladies Library
does not appear among the titles Cox listed as being for sale, but at the end of that list, he added, “The abovesaid Shop will be constantly supplied with the newest and most valuable Books as soon as possible, a considerable Quantity besides the above-mentioned being shortly expected in the
London
Ships.” Franklin later urged the Library Company to send to Boston for books imported from London, arguing that they could be purchased more cheaply there than in London. If Cox stocked
The Ladies Library,
Franklin could have bought the book for Jane during his visit. The book does not appear in Thomas Cox,
A Catalogue of Books, In all Arts and Sciences, To be Sold at the Shop of T. Cox, Bookseller
(Boston, 1734), although it is possible that, in 1734, Cox was simply out of stock of this title. See also James N. Green, “Franklin’s Bookshop,” unpublished manuscript, 2012.
7.
JFM to DRF, November 24, 1766.
8.
BF, “Observations on my Reading History in Library,” May 9, 1731, in
PBF,
1:193.
9.
Mary Astell,
The Christian Religion, As Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England
(London: S.H., 1705), 292. And also quoted in Perry,
The Celebrated Mary Astell
, 9.
10.
David Hume, “Of the Study of History,” in
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary,
part 3, essay 6.
11.
And see, by way of comparison,
The Gentleman’s Library, Containing Rules for Conduct
in all Parts of Life
(London: E.P., 1715), published a year after the first edition of
The Ladies Library
(London, 1714).
12.
BF,
Autobiography,
64.
13.
Steele,
The Ladies Library
(London, 1732), 1:1.
14.
Ebenezer Mecom (listed as “Mecum”) was baptized at the
Brattle Street Church on May 4, 1735. Only “Edward Mecum” is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
157.
15.
Only a handful of letters written by her children survive. All are written by either her son Benny or her daughter Jenny. They both wrote better than their mother. For letters written by Jane Mecom Collas, see Jane Mecom Collas to BF, Boston, July 9, 1773; Boston, January 9, 1778; Cambridge, June 6, 1781; Boston, November 11, 1787; and Boston, July 16, 1788. We know that Benjamin Mecom wrote to BF. For BF’s references to those letters, see BF to JFM, [June? 1748]; BF to Edward Mecom and JFM, September 14, 1756, February 12, 1756, and June 28, 1756.
16.
JFM to DRF, January 29, 1758. Ideas about
filth were changing as, over the course of the eighteenth century, dirtiness came to be especially associated with the poor. See Alain Corbin,
The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), especially chapter 9. On laundry and the growing demand for whiter and whiter linens, see Kathleen M. Brown,
Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), chapter 4.
17.
Pennsylvania Gazette,
April 18, 1734.
18.
BF,
Autobiography,
65.
19.
Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
40.
20.
For Josiah Franklin’s estate inventory of 1752, including pots, pans, irons, kettles, and tubs—evidence of Jane’s labor—see “Inventory of Josiah Franklin’s Estate, October 24, 1752” in Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah,” 127.
21.
See Charles Coleman Sellers,
Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), chapter 2.
22.
BF to JFM, January 13, 1772.
23.
Sarah Mecom was baptized at the Brattle Street Church on July 3, 1737, by
Benjamin Colman. Only Edward Mecom is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
160.
24.
The signed promissory note is included in the case file: Massachusetts Judicial Archives, Suffolk Files Collection, Reel 163, vol. 301, no. 45414. Collson & Mecom. Jan 1737–8 (that is, January 1738).
25.
On this, in fiction, see, e.g., Mary Poovey,
Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), chapter 1, “The Paper Age.”
26.
“It would strangely Cramp the
Trade
of a People, if it might be no more than the
Cash
that is running among them.” Cotton Mather,
Fair Dealing between Debtor and Creditor: A very brief Essay upon The Caution to be used, about coming in to DEBT, And getting out of it
(Boston: B. Green, 1716), 8.
27.
For the order concerning the issue of paper bills, see
At The General Court of their Majesties Colony of the Massachusetts BAY in New-England, Sitting in Boston by Adjournment. December 10th, 1690
(Cambridge, MA: Samuel Green, 1690). See also Gary B. Nash,
The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the
American Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 2–3. BF,
A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency
(Philadelphia, 1729), in
PBF,
1:139–57. And see Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
52–57.
28.
Advertisement,
Pennsylvania Gazette,
October 9, 1729. And Green and Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin,
chapter 3.
29.
Nash,
Urban Crucible,
72.
30.
Jabez Warner, a Connecticut shoemaker, wrote his own record on a page of his account book:
Anne Warner daughter to Jabez and hannah Warner was born Jan.-the 24th 1757.
And then:
Departed this Life Novbr-24th 1760 four years old wanting 2 months.
Jabez Warner Account Book, 1754–70 and 1783–1837, Connecticut Historical Society, as cited in Wulf, “Bible, King, and Common Law.” And, for more on family registers, which became commonplace only at the end of the eighteenth century, see Georgia Brady Barnhill, “ ‘Keep Sacred the Memory of Your Ancestors’: Family Registers and Memorial Prints,” in Simons and Benes,
The Art of Family,
60–74.
31.
For instructions on the keeping of accounts at the time, see Robert Lundin,
Reason of Accompting by Debitor and Creditor
(Edinburgh, 1718). Franklin’s
account books are included in
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
but see also
Account Books Kept by Benjamin Franklin,
ed. George Simpson Eddy, 2 vols. (New York, 1928–29).
32.
Bruce H. Mann,
Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 286n8.
33.
George Philip Bauer, “The Movement Against Imprisonment for Debt in the United States” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1935), 37. See also Christine Daniels, “ ‘Without Any Limitacon of Time’: Debt Servitude in Colonial America,”
Labor History
36 (1995): 232–50.
34.
Defoe once wrote, allegorically, about his coy
mistress, Lady Credit, whose hand was hard to win: “If you court her, you lose her.” See Paula R. Backscheider, “Defoe’s Lady Credit,”
Huntington Library Quarterly
44 (1981): 89–100.
35.
Bauer, “Imprisonment for Debt,” 37. See also Daniels, “ ‘Without Any Limitacon of Time.’ ”
36.
Bauer, “Imprisonment for Debt,” 23–24, 31–32.
37.
“The Liberties of the Massachusets Colonie in New England,” in
The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts. Reprinted From the Edition of 1660, With the Supplements to 1672. Containing Also, The Body of Liberties of 1641
(Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1889), 41.
38.
JFM to BF, January 8, 1788. This remark concerns not her husband, in the 1730s, but her son-in-law
Peter Collas, in the 1780s.
39.
Massachusetts Judicial Archives, Suffolk Files Collection, Reel 163, vol. 301, no. 45414 (3 papers f. 43–44). Collson & Mecom. Jan 1737–8 (that is, January 1738).
40.
BF,
Poor Richard Improved, 1758, PBF,
7:348.
41.
BF,
Poor Richard, 1736, PBF,
2:141.
42.
BF, “The Drinker’s Dictionary,” January 13, 1736–37,
PBF,
2:173–78. Accounts between Mecom and his creditors can be found in the Massachusetts Judicial Archives, Suffolk Files Collection, Reel 162, vol. 300, no. 45226, Account of Price and Mecom, 27 Dec. 1737; Reel 163, vol. 301, no. 45414 (3 papers f. 43–44). Collson
& Mecom. Jan 1737–8; Reel 167, v. 309, no. 46904 (3 papers). Banister &c. v. Mecom or Corbet & Mecom. July 1738; Reel 175, v. 322, no. 49481. Perkins v. Mecom. July 1739.
43.
The records of Edward Mecom’s debts are in the Massachusetts Judicial Archives, Court of Common Pleas, Suffolk County, Record Books, as follows: v. 1737, p. 22, Green vs. Mecom./[October 1737]; v. 1737, p. 78, Price vs. Mecom./Exn 10 ffeby 1737; v. 1737, p. 117, Mecom vs. Bisco. “Exn. 4 ffeby. 1737./”; v. 1737, p. 120, Colson vs. Mecom./“Exn. 4 ffeby. 1737”; v. 1737, p. 342, Banister &c. vs. Mecom. “Excon issued Sept.20.1738”; v. 1738, p. 45, Kneeland v. Macom./“Excon issued Decr. 22.d 173[8]/All. Septr. 6. 1739”; v. 1738, p. 151, Carter v. Macom, “Excon issued Feb. 1. 1738/[39]”; v. 1738, p. 361, Perkins v. Macom, [no date, probably August or September 1739].
44.
John Perkins, “Memoirs of the life writings and opinions of John Perkins physician lately of Boston, begun March 1777, and continued to 1778,” unpublished manuscript, AAS, 2.
45.
John Perkins, Notebook, AAS, “Medical, Political, & Religious &c.,” 32. Little is known about how Jane cared for her children when they were sick, but for a related account, see Helena M. Wall, “ ‘My Constant Attension on My Sick Child’: The Fragility of Family Life in the World of Elizabeth Drinker,” in
Children in Colonial America,
155–67.
46.
Peter Franklin Mecom was baptized at the
Brattle Street Church on May 13, 1739. Which minister officiated is not listed, but at this point Colman had ceased conducting
baptisms: “Hence forward I take ye fore-noon exurcise, & leave ye Baptisms (as at times of late I have done) to Mr. Cooper,” 161. Only Edward Mecom is listed as parent.
Manifesto Church,
162.
47.
The records of Edward Mecom’s indebtedness in these years can be found in the Mass. Arch., Suffolk Files, as follows: 1737 (Document 45414, Reel 163); 1737 (Document 4519, Reel 162); 1738 (Document 46904, Reel 167); 1739 (Document 49481, Reel 175).
48.
JFM to BF, January 8, 1788; here again concerning the debts of JFM’s son-in-law Peter Collas.
49.
See Martha J. McNamara,
From Tavern to Courthouse: Architecture and Ritual in American Law, 1658–1860
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 47.
50.
There are very few reliable numbers for colonial American debtors’ prisons, and there is some debate about how prevalent they were. Bauer admits that it’s hard to get real figures, but he estimates “that the number of instances of
imprisonment
for debt, while fluctuating widely, increased on the whole during the latter part of the seventeenth century and all of the eighteenth at a somewhat faster rate than the population, though not so much faster as one might be led to suppose from a casual survey of the evidence” (“Imprisonment for Debt,” 45–46). But see the dissenting view of Edwin T. Randall, “Imprisonment for Debt in America: Fact and Fiction,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
39 (June 1952): 89–102.