I am still at my good friend Greene's. She says she will write, but is not at home and may not have time, for she always lives just as you saw her when here. The judge is chosen Governor, so you will know how to direct your letters for the future to be left here and not to Coventry, for Elihu is about moving to Potawam, but they are so long concluding I don't know if it will ever be. I am your sincerely affectionate mother
JANE MECOM
I was not displeased about the Massachusetts money, but thought it might buy him some trifle, and it does not pass here.
Mrs. Greene says she did send your Galoshes by Captain Collings to Mr. Gouch's. I am sorry for poor Mrs. Sayre. Send me word all about the family. I never writ a superscription myself to go to my brother, without expecting it to be enclosed if Mr. Williams sent one by your husband, and I must have sent it him when Mr. Collas was on the Privateering voyage, or should have sent it directly to you.
Mrs. Jane Collas
To the Care of Mr. William Gooch
"In constant Jeperdie since the spring"[Printed first, and hitherto only, in Duane, Letters to Benjamin Franklin, pp. 81-84, without the passages on the insanity of Benjamin and Peter Mecom; here printed entire from the manuscript in the American Philosophical Society. The British held Newport from December 1776 to October 1779, and the whole of Rhode Island was in danger. John Hancock commanded the Massachusetts forces sent against the British in 1778, and Nathanael Greene and his brothers were engaged in the effort. Jane Mecom was then living with her granddaughter Jane Greene. The two brothers "Dean" were Silas and Simeon Deane. "Mr Williams" was Jonathan Williams Sr., here for some reason not called "Cousin Williams." Jane Mecom probably thought Peter Collas responsible for the loss of more letters to France than he was. Ray Greene was at Dummer Academy at Byfield, Massachusetts, of which the Reverend Samuel Moody was the first master. The "Mr Hubbard" mentioned in this letter has not been certainly identified. In this letter Jane Mecom said that her son Benjamin had strayed away "soon affter the batte at Trenton" ( December 26, 1776); in her letter of February 14,
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