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Pennsylvania Magazine of HISTORY and BIOGRAPHY

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Pennsylvania Magazine of HISTORY and BIOGRAPHY THE Pennsylvania Magazine OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Benjamin Franklin Slept Here VER the years a vast body of lore, both authenticated and I fanciful, has accumulated regarding the houses in which O George Washington is reputed to have slept. No such corpus has become associated with Benjamin Franklin, however, an omission for which he himself is largely to blame. Perhaps because in Philadelphia he was aware that everyone knew where he lived, that city's best known eighteenth-century citizen rarely bothered to mention in his writings his various resi- dences there. As a result, the general impression obtains that he lived in no more than three different dwellings during his long association with Philadelphia: in John Read's house; in the property on the north side of Market Street below Second where he had his shop and printing office; and in his final home on the opposite side of the same street, but two squares west between Third and Fourth. Nothing could be farther from the facts. Between his first arrival in Philadelphia in October, 1723, at the age of seventeen, and April, 1763, forty years later, when he began to build that final home, Franklin and/or his family occupied at least a dozen different premises. Of these, one can be located only generally, and two are open to question. Such mention as is found of Franklin's various living quarters is scattered. Nevertheless, it is possible to resurrect 127 128 HANNAH BENNER ROACH April from oblivion those which can be located definitely, and to suggest the possible locations of the others. Not included among the twelve, as neither should be termed a "home" in the domestic sense, are the great Quaker Meeting House at the southwest corner of Second and Market streets which Franklin himself credits as "the first house I was in or slept in, in Philadelphia," or the Crooked Billet Tavern, where he "slept soundly" his first night in town "till next morning."1 The Crooked Billet Tavern was located on the site of the present 35 South Front Street, not quite one hundred and fifty feet north of Chestnut Street, and had a frontage of twenty-four feet on both Front and Water streets. Since the tavern had been accommodating strangers as early as 1690, it was reputed to be one of the oldest taverns in town, but like the public stairs along its south wall, the building had seen better days. Currently, the inn was being kept by George Forrington.2 Just across the rude cartway of Water Street opposite the tavern were frame buildings housing shops on the "key" or wharf which extended out into the Delaware.3 Frank- lin's sound sleep, that first night in Philadelphia, was apparently undisturbed by the soft lapping of water against the wharf's pilings, or by the creaking of cables as the small vessels moored along the wharf swung on their lines. By Franklin's second night in Philadelphia, he was established in his first quarters in the city. That morning he had made himself as tidy as he could, and had then walked up to Second Street to 1 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin & Selections from His Other Writings (Modern Library Edition, 1950), 31, hereinafter cited as Autobiography. The writer is greatly indebted to Leonard W. Labaree, editor of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, for the helpful criticisms and comments tendered her in the editing of this paper. 2 Philadelphia Exemplification Book I, 207: May 3, 1692, Patent to Alice Guest, recorded in Patent Book A-i, 301, Land Office, Department of Internal Affairs, Harrisburg. Hereinafter, all exemplification records, wills, and deeds are Philadelphia records, on file in Department of Records, Philadelphia City Hall. In Deed Book F-2, 94: Dec. 11, 1719, George Guest to Anthony Morris, Jr., the tavern is specifically stated as being located between Front and King (later Water) sts. In the American Weekly Mercury', Dec. 2, 1725, George Forrington, inn- keeper at the Crooked Billet, notified the public that he was to leave the province in about two months' time. 3 Only two years before, the Grand Jury had presented the stairs as being much out of repair and dangerous. For a more extended description of this property, see Robert C. Moon, M.D., The Morris Family of Philadelphia: Descendants of Anthony Morris, 1654-1721 (Phila- delphia, 1898), I, 135-138. i960 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SLEPT HERE 129 the Sign of the Bible. There he had applied for a job to Andrew Bradford, printer of Philadelphia's first and, so far, only newssheet, the ^American Weekly ^Mercury. Bradford had no opening, but had suggested that Franklin apply to Samuel Keimer, another printer "lately set up" in town. If Franklin should have no luck there, Bradford had told the lad he might lodge with him if he wanted to; perhaps Bradford could find a little work for him to do "till further business should offer."4 Keimer's shop was still farther up town on the south side of Market Street between Third and Fourth. There Franklin had found that Keimer had just acquired "an old shattered press, and one small, worn-out font of English" type, and at the moment of Franklin's arrival, was setting up some verses "directly out of his head" into type. Since there was but a single pair of cases to work with, Keimer had put his composing stick into Franklin's hand to see how the lad worked, and had continued to deliver his lines of verse to be set up as he composed them. Satisfied on the score of his ability, Keimer had then agreed to employ Franklin in a few days' time, once his verses were ready for printing, and allowed the lad to put the press, which Franklin remembered had not been used as yet, "into order fit to be work'd with." After that, and as Keimer's house was "without furniture" —the printer lodged next door with his landlord—Franklin had returned to the Sign of the Bible where Bradford gave him "a little job to do for the present." Here Franklin "lodged and dieted" in his first quarters in Philadelphia.5 Bradford had been operating as a printer in Philadelphia for almost ten years. During that time he had been printing for the Philadelphia Friends' Meeting, renting from them the old printing press which they had purchased in England in 1698. Bradford also appears to have rented from the Meeting accommodations for himself and his wife Dorcas—they had no children—and for the shop he maintained in conjunction with his printing establishment. Since his sign hung out over Second Street, these quarters were presumably somewhere on the forty-five-foot lot, located eighty feet south of the southwest corner of Second and Market streets, 4 Autobiography, 31. * Ibid., 31. I3O HANNAH BENNER ROACH April which extended west one hundred and thirty-two feet to Strawberry- Alley. The lot now includes the premises numbered 12, 14, 16 and 18 South Second Street.6 Between the lot and Market Street stood the Friends' Meeting House where Franklin had napped the previous day. South of it, in the northwest corner of the forty-five-foot lot, was the Friends' schoolhouse; it had a frontage of twenty-five feet on Strawberry Alley and extended east sixty feet toward Second Street.7 Possibly it was in the east end of this building that the Bradfords lived; certainly, it seems to have been in this building that the printing press was set up. The only other building known to have been erected by 1723 on the forty-five-foot lot was the original messuage, built between 1693 and 1695. It was directly east of the schoolhouse on the site of the present 12 and 14 South Second Street. This messuage, however, was rented by Friends in 1723 to Evan Owen and Thomas Cannon, both members of the Meeting.8 Perhaps one of them sublet to Bradford a front room in which he kept shop. An extended study of the titles to the entire lot has failed to reveal, however, the precise location in 1723 of the Sign of the Bible. Wherever it was, Franklin's stay there was brief. "A few days after" he had settled at the Bradfords, Keimer sent for Franklin to print his now completed verses, "having got another pair of 6 For title to this tract, see Block 1-S-2, lots 50 and 59 fronting on Strawberry Alley, and lots 19, 195 and 198 fronting on Second St., in Registry Division, Philadelphia Department of Records, hereinafter referred to as Registry Division. Unfortunately, pertinent deeds referring to the early colonial period are scant. Anna Janney DeArmond's study, Andrew Bradford, Colonial Journalist (Newark, Del., 1949), contributes little definite information on Bradford's various locations—of which there were four—in Philadelphia. A certain amount of information on the Friends' schoolhouse may be gleaned from Thomas Woody's Early Quaker Education in Pennsylvania (New York, 1920). His data was drawn from the early minutes of the Philadel- phia Monthly Meeting, transcripts of which, as well as items in the Logan Papers, XVII, XVIII, in The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), have all been examined. 7 Philadelphia Monthly Meeting Minutes, I, 298, entry for 27 4m 1701, in the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania (GSP). The ground on which the schoolhouse was originally built was part of the larger lot William Markham had sold to Friends in 1695 for a new meetinghouse. See Exemplification Book I, 618: Sept. 3, 1705, Patent to Edward Shippen, recorded in Patent Book A-3, 146.
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