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A 1781 letter written by Stratford-reared Alice Lee Shippen is mistakenly delivered to Braintree rather than to Boston. Politically literate, if shaped by family partiality, Alice's letter offers its unintended recipient clarity about intrigues involving an absent husband on diplomatic assignment. At the heart of these intrigues is a much beloved figure in the American mythos, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. But Dr. Franklin wasn't beloved by all, not quite the hero then that he has become, especially not to those who worked with him during the Revolution and expressed frustration with his idiosyncratic ways of conducting American business. The letter constitutes the origin of a correspondence between two elite women of politically significant families and raises a window on the intramural frictions, friendships, and resentments that were a naturally occurring feature of the American founding.

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