being at the meeting of August 1751,[1] and there was but one absence to note in 1752, "when the Trustees visited the Schools, but did no other business," the year of his most interesting electrical experiments; the year 1753 shows absence from only three regular meetings in the summer of his first duty as Postmaster General which engaged him in his travels to the Eastward, besides his two Indian Missions; in 1754 his absences were more notable, due largely to his visit to Albany with the Commissioners; in 1755 being early in the year absent on a visit to New England, and later engaged in aiding Braddock[2] his name does not appear in two of the regular meetings; in 1756 his absence was more notable owing to his frequent journeys from home. Visiting Virginia on his post office duties in the Spring he received from William and Mary College in person on 2 April the degree of A.M., "conferred upon him by the Rev G. Dawson, A. M., President, to whom he was in public presented by the Rev. Wm Preston A. M." [3] On his return from there early in June we find him at the close of the month in New York, and in November at Easton attending an Indian Conference. In April 1757, he sailed on his first foreign mission to the mother country. Arriving home in November, 1762, he resumes his attendance at the meetings, but in 1763 he was frequently absent, his public duties withdrawing him from other concerns; and in November, 1764, he set sail for London on his second mission. He was elected the first president of the Board of Trustees, being succeeded by Richard Peters who was elected 11 May, 1756. The minutes give us no indication of the cause of his declining a re-election at this time: his journey to Albany in the previous year, his absences now from the first five meetings of the current year, may be indications of his accumulating public duties, but there were thus early developing some of those causes
- ↑ His absence from a meeting of the Common Council that day, also, would show that absence from the city was the cause.
- ↑ Bigelow, ii. 414. Sparks, vii. 85. "Since my return, I have been in such a perpetual hurry of public affairs of various kinds," he writes 11 Sept. 1755. Paxton, i. 342.
- ↑ Faculty Proceedings, Historical Sketch of the College of William and Mary, p. 42. He writes to his wife from Williamsburg, 30 March, 1756: "Virginia is a pleasant country; now in full spring; the people obliging and polite." Bigelow, ii. 458.
