Beschreibung:

Autograph letter signed by Stafford to James Logan, regarding Logan's decision to accompany William Penn to Pennsylvania as his secretary.
Laugh[arn]e, [near Swansea]: 20 June 1699. 1p., single sheet (302 x 190 mm). Written on one side, panel on the verso addressed to "James Logan att William Penn's house at Worminghurst in the County of Sussex." Condition : badly damaged along a fold with losses to several words of the postscript. contemporary evidence marking what was the most important event in the early life of "one of the three or four most considerable men in colonial america" (Tolles). Logan had written to Quaker merchant Richard Stafford on 8 April to inform him that he had decided to take up the post of secretary to William Penn. That position was no mere clerical job, but rather the Proprietor's chief representative in his colonial affairs. Penn had summoned the 24-year old Logan to see him in the early spring; Logan had considered the "the invitation for several days, then rode to Bath [from Bristol], where Penn was taking the waters, and accepted" (Tolles). In this letter, Stafford writes that "the consideration of thy design of settling among us especially as a Partner was very highly pleasing & acceptable to me." According to Tolles, Logan had spent the previous eight months struggling "to break into the closed circle of cloth merchants with little success." This letter suggests that he indeed had been offered a partnership with Stafford, but had declined in favor of Penn. Stafford continues the letter writing that although initially disappointed at Logan’s acceptance of Penn’s offer, "as much as I soon got into the Account it would prove more to thy advantage I the sooner got over the grudging of the disease; & now can truly say that I most heartily & sincerely congratulate the propitiousness of thy Fates…" In September 1699, Logan would set sail from Portsmouth, England, aboard the "Canterbury" with William Penn and his family. "During a great part of the next half century, until he died in 1751, full of years and honors, he was the region's most influential statesman, its most distinguished scholar … Easily the most considerable man in the Delaware Valley in his lifetime, he was, take him by and large, one of the three or four most considerable men in colonial America" (Tolles). See F.B. Tolles, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston, 1957).