Burgwin-Wright Museum House

Wilmington
NC

Portrait by Artist to Come

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Built 1770 by John Burgwin, who was the colonial treasurer under the Royal Governor. General Lord Cornwallis rested here in 1781 prior to his march to Yorktown.
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At the end of March [1783] Franklin applied to [French Foreign Secretary] Vergennes for permission to publish a complete translation of the United States constitutions in French, the only language in which they could be widely read. He was eager to correct Europe’s misapprehensions about the new nation; he knew as well that he was offering up an advertisement for American trade and immigration.... Copies went out over the summer to the entire diplomatic corps and, in extravagantly bound editions, to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The most influential of Franklin’s European publications the constitutions were universally well received.

Stacy Schiff
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005)