Objects / Pennsylvania Hospital
Promissory Notes for the Pennsylvania Hospital
Multiple promissory notes printed by Benjamin Franklin including: single sheet containing two promissory notes numbers 9 and 10 for the Pennsylvania Hospital. Dated July 1, 1751 The first is the promissory note of Dr. Thomas Cadwalader (no. 10) and is signed by Thomas Bond and Joseph Morris, two of the first Managers of the hospital. The second is for Isaac Jones (no 9) signed by Cadwalader and Bond. Docketing on back with reciepts of payment. Jones was on eof the managers of the Hospital before 1754.
Promissory notes for the following individuals:
Samuel Preston Moore dated May 1, 1751 John Redman dated May 1, 1751
Phineas Bond Dated July 1, 1751
John Armitt and Anthony Morris Jr. (single sheet, numbers 7 and 8) Armitt (no. 7) dated May 1, 1751, signed by Cadwalader and Anthony Morris Jr. (no 8) dated Nay 1, 1751 and signbed by Isaac Jones and Cadwalader.
William Shippen Sr. and Edward Penington (single sheet, No 71 and 72) Shippen dated January 4, 1752 and is signed by Timothy Matlack. Penington dated February 11, 1752 and signed by Joshua Howell and Timothy atlack (matlack signature cut) James Clewlow (unrecorded) Dated August 21, 1754, signed by William Shippen, Sr. and Hugh Roberts
Cadwalader, Phineas Bond, Thomas Bond, and Samuel Preston Moore repreent 4 of the first 5 physicians of the Pennsylvania Hospital (the other being Lloyd Zachary).
Exceptional.
The physical instruments of Franklin's fundraising campaign: the documents through which Philadelphia citizens committed their subscriptions and through which the matching-grant strategy was implemented. These notes are the ledger-level reality behind the legislative maneuver -- the civic infrastructure of early American philanthropy in its most material form. Franklin understood that institutions were built through the accumulation of individual commitments recorded in ink on paper. Each note is a citizen's investment in the proposition that a city owed its poor the means of healing.
- Date
- 1751
- Author / maker
- Franklin, Benjamin (printer / organizer)
- References
- Miller 598, although this was printed in 1754, therefore any dated prior to this are earlier and are not recorded in Miller. They can be distinguished both by the date of the inscription but also by the earlier ones having the word "fifty" on its own last line versus the 598 having "Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty" on the last line.
