David Franks

Contents

Foreword by William Pencak

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. David Franks, Arrested for Treason

2. Family, Friends, and Associates

3. Indian Affairs, Family Growth, and Supplying the Army

4. Commercial Adventures

5. Plumsted and Franks, Agents for the Contractors

6. General Jeffrey Amherst and Colonel Henry Bouquet

7. Major General Thomas Gage

8. Franks, Inglis and Barkly, Agents for the Contractors

9. Levy and Franks and Land Speculation Companies

10. A Time of Transition

11. Working Both Sides of the Street

12. War and Financial Turmoil in Philadelphia

13. The Revenge of the Radicals

14. A Time of Trials

15. Exiles

16. The Final Chapter

Appendix A Letters to the Editor

Appendix B Questions of Death and Burial

Appendix C “Dear Mrs. Cad”: A Revolutionary War Letter of Rebecca Franks

Notes

Bibliography

Index

“In this gracefully written book, Mark Abbott Stern tells the story of a Jewish man, his Christian family, and his adopted city of Philadelphia during the era that led to American independence. David Franks: Colonial Merchant is the sweeping and illuminating chronicle of a businessman’s engagement with history, the grand intersection of personal temperament with war, westward expansion, and social assimilation. Demonstrating remarkable archival scholarship, Stern writes with skill, sympathy, and mastery about a man in his times.”

—Edith B. Gelles, Stanford University