attended was that of 30 May, 1769; and on 19 May, 1772, he wrote the Trustees:
As it is not any longer convenient for me to give that attendance at your Meetings which the Duty of a Trustee requires, I would request you to accept my Resignation, which I do not make out of any Disregard to the Institution, the Prosperity of which I shall always wish; but because my continuing longer in the office of a Trustee prevents you from having some more useful and active member.
And at the meeting of 25 May following:
The Hon'ble Richard Penn, Esqr., the present Governor of the Province, is unanimously elected a Trustee in the Room of Col. White who has lately resigned; and Dr. Peters, Mr. Inglis, and the Provost are desired to wait upon his Honor, and request his acceptance of a share in the Trust and Direction of this Institution.
William Coleman, of whom Franklin so tenderly speaks when reciting[1] the names of his friends of the Junto, as having "the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals, of almost any man I ever met with," was born in 1704, the son of William Coleman. "Our friendship," he says, "continued without interruption to his death, upwards of forty years." The meagre information we have of him does not satisfy our desires to know more of the man of whom Franklin gives such a testimony. He early attained eminence as a faithful citizen and a successful merchant. He was a Common Councilman in 1739, was appointed Clerk of the City Court, 18 September, 1747, and on 30 June, 1749, a Justice of the Peace of the County Courts of Philadelphia together with Thomas Lawrence, Abram Taylor, Robert Strettell, Joseph Turner, Thomas Hopkinson, William Allen, Joshua Maddox, Charles Willing, and Benjamin Franklin, with whom he was to be a co-trustee of the new Academy organized before the close of that year. He was again commissioned 25 May, 1752, others of the Trustees then being included, William Plumsted, Thomas White, and John Mifflin. On 27 November, 1757, he was made Presiding Justice of the Court of Quarter Sessions, and on 8 April, 1758, an associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Province, to which he was
- ↑ Bigelow, i. 143.
