North American Land Company. Certificate for five shares issued to William Temple Franklin, signed by Robert Morris

"This is to Certify that William Temple Franklin is entitled to five Shares in the entire Property of the North American Land Company, the Dividend whereof shall not be less than Six Dollars on each Share Annually." Certificate No. 982, for shares 14,118 to 14,122, signed by Robert Morris as President and James Marshall as Secretary.

The North American Land Company was the last and largest speculation of Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, who with John Nicholson and James Greenleaf pooled some six million acres in 1795 and sold shares against them. The company failed, and within three years Morris was in the Prune Street debtors' prison. Certificates signed by him survive in some numbers. This one matters for the name written into it.

William Temple Franklin was Benjamin Franklin's grandson, the son of the loyalist Governor William Franklin. His grandfather took him to Paris in 1776, made him secretary of the American mission, and left him his papers. The family had speculated in land for three generations. Benjamin and William Franklin were partners with the Whartons and George Croghan in the western tracts discussed in William's letter of 1769 in this collection, and here is Temple, five years after his grandfather's death, buying into the greatest land bubble of the new republic.

People in this record