“An Office I had some kind of Right to”: Benjamin Franklin and the Origins of the U.S. Postal Service

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on “An Office I had some kind of Right to”: Benjamin Franklin and the Origins of the U.S. Postal Service In 1788, near the end of his life, Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) summed up a lengthy and significant association with the postal system in America in a letter to his old friend Charles Thomson, then secretary of the Continental Congress. Franklin wrote, “On my Return from England the Congress bestow’d on me the Office of Postmaster General, for which I was very thankful. It was indeed an Office I...
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Prisoners of Congress by Norman E. Donoghue II

Posted by on Dec 1, 2023 in | Comments Off on Prisoners of Congress by Norman E. Donoghue II Prisoners of Congress Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777–1778 by Norman E. Donoghue II Pennsylvania State University Press, 288 pages, hardcover $44.95 Norman E. Donoghue II’s exceptionally readable and richly sourced Prisoners of Congress is a long-needed scholarly treatment of the case of the “Virginia Exiles”: 20 Philadelphians, nearly all Quakers, “exiled” to house arrest in Winchester,...
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Elizabeth Drinker and the Quaker Exile

Posted by on Mar 17, 2023 in | Comments Off on Elizabeth Drinker and the Quaker Exile In 1758, at the age of 23, Philadelphia Quaker Elizabeth Drinker began keeping a diary. In it, she recorded social calls, correspondence, the operation of her household, illnesses, births, deaths, and marriages. An avid reader, Elizabeth also recorded her thoughts on books she read. She continued her diary until the end of her life. Throughout the tumultuous years of the American Revolution,...
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The Loyal Son by Daniel Mark Epstein

Posted by on Nov 3, 2019 in | Comments Off on The Loyal Son by Daniel Mark Epstein The Loyal Son The War in Ben Franklin’s House by Daniel Mark Epstein Ballantine Books, 464 pp., cloth $30 The Loyal Son vividly narrates the complex and often painful relationship between Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) and his son William Franklin (c.1730–1813), from its beginnings in Philadelphia to its foundering on the rocks of the American Revolution. For some 40 years, the pair were on warm,...
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York County: A Most Treasured Land

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on York County: A Most Treasured Land Planted squarely above the Maryland border, the gigantic horse’s hoof, which is the out­ line of York County, covers an area of 914 square miles, supporting a popula­tion of 300,000. Its eastern contour is delineated by the “long, crooked” Sus­quehanna, its pastern cleanly cut off by Cumberland County on the north, its outer edge defined by Adams Coun­ty on the west. This...
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Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy When Lancaster County was established on May 10, 1729, it became the proto­type for the sixty-three counties to follow. The original three counties­Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester – were created as copies of typical English shires. The frontier conditions of Ches­ter County’s backwoods, from which Lancaster was formed, presented knot­ty problems to the civilized English­men....
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Pennsylvania’s Architectural Heritage: Statehouses and Capitols

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s Architectural Heritage: Statehouses and Capitols Through the three centuries of Pennsylvania’s history, the build­ings that always have been both the functional and symbolic heart of the Commonwealth have been the seats of government. These statehouses and capitols bespeak much about the governmental structure and social ideals of the respective ages which created them. Indeed, the very change of nomenclature from statehouse to capitol...
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Iconographic Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Iconographic Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia In the summer of 1731, Benjamin Franklin later re­counted in his autobiography, “I set on foot my first Proj­ect of a public Nature, that for a Subscription Library.” He encouraged fifty subscribers to contribute forty shillings each for the purchase of books that were considered indispen­sable to colonial Americans, but were generally too expensive for any one individual alone to...
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Courting the Constitution

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Courting the Constitution If the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were to awaken this sum­mer in Independence Hall from two centuries of sleep, they would undoubtedly enjoy an exciting session. George Washington as president of the convention, after persuading Ben Franklin to stop tinkering with his electric table light, would call the Convention to order. Upon learning that the government devised by them had...
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The Making of a Miracle

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Making of a Miracle Early in 1788, George Washington wrote his friend the Marquis de Lafayette that there had been a “miracle” in Phila­delphia. Considering the many efforts and failures be­tween 1765 and 1787 to estab­lish an enduring form of government, first for individ­ual states and then for all­ – fundamental laws, orders of government, plans of union, resolutions, declarations,...
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