The Governor and the Otsego Tract
William Franklin was royal governor of New Jersey and his father's partner in the one venture that eventually embarrassed them both: western land. This letter, written from Burlington on September 19, 1769, and previously unrecorded, is four pages of the governor untangling a quarrel over the Otsego tract — some 170,000 acres of Iroquois land on the upper Susquehanna, bought at Fort Stanwix the year before and divided among Croghan, Trent, McKee, the Wharton brothers, and the two Franklins.
Croghan has accused Wharton's brother of misrepresenting the price paid to the Indians; the governor, going over his memory and his papers, cannot make the accusation fit. The letter is the plainest surviving account of how the Fort Stanwix purchases were actually arranged, and of the Franklins' place in them. Read it beside the Trent and Croghan bond of 1750 and the Proclamation Line becomes a family matter.
FRANKLIN, WILLIAM. Autograph letter addressed “Dear Friend” [Thomas Wharton], dated 19 September 1769, Burlington, NJ
The governor writes to Wharton, his and his father's partner in the Indiana Company's claim to the Ohio lands — the last great speculation in which the Franklins were on the same side. Seven years later Wharton's Philadelphia was the seat of the Congress that arrested him.
- [Franklin Imprint]. Know all Men by these Presents That [William Trent & George Croghan
- FRANKLIN, William. A Letter from His Excellency William Franklin, Esquire; To the Honorable the Gentlemen of His Majesty’s Council and to the Gentlemen of the House of Representatives of His Majesty’s Province of New-Jersey