1725 Ben Frankilin entices Hans Sloan into paying for a Native American Plant

Young Ben Franklin (c1746) by Robert Feke (1705-1750) 

From Benjamin Franklin to Sir Hans Sloane, 2 June 1725
To Sir Hans Sloane (1)
als: British Museum
June 2, 1725
Sir
Having lately been in the Nothern Parts of America, I have brought from thence a Purse made of the Stone Asbestus, (2) a Piece of the Stone, & a Piece of Wood, the Pithy Part of which is of the same Nature, & call’d by the Inhabitants, Salamander Cotton. As you are noted to be a Lover of Curiosities, I have inform’d you of these; & if you have any Inclination to purchase them, or see ’em, let me know your Pleasure by a Line directed for me at the Golden Fan in Little Britain, & I will wait upon you with them. I am, Sir Your most humble Servant

Benjamin Franklin

p.s. I expect to be out of Town in 2 or 3 Days, & therefore beg an immediate Answer.

Addressed: For Sir Hans Sloane, in Kingstreet. Bloomsbury 

Hans Sloane (1660-1753)

SHans Sloane (1660–1753), secretary of the Royal Society, 1693–1712, succeeded Isaac Newton as its president, 1727; physician to Queen Anne & to George I; president of the Royal College of Physicians, 1719–35; founder of the Chelsea Physic Garden. His books, manuscripts, & natural history specimens, bequeathed to the nation, formed a part of the original collection of the British Museum. G. R. de Beer, Sir Hans Sloane & the British Museum (London, 1953).

2 This purse, now in the British Museum (Natural History), was made of roughly plaited tremolite-asbestos, of primitive form, with loops at the top through which an asbestos thread was run. Jessie M. Sweet, “Benjamin Franklin’s Purse,” Notes & Records of the Royal Society of London, ix (1952), 308–9. A picture of it appears in i. Bernard Cohen, Franklin & Newton (Phila., 1956), facing p. 248.

3 Nearly 50 years later bf recorded this incident otherwise. Sloane, he wrote in his autobiography, heard of the purse, called on him, took him home to see “all his Curiosities, & persuaded me to let him add that [the purse] to the Number, for which he paid me handsomely.”

“From Benjamin Franklin to Sir Hans Sloane, 2 June 1725,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0027. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 1, January 6, 1706 through December 31, 1734, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, pp. 54–56.]