MS011
Moses Bartram
American Philosophical Society Membership Certificate, 1786

This Document certifies that Moses Bartram of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society.[1]  It was signed on January 20, 1786, by the Society’s President, Benjamin Franklin; Vice-Presidents John Ewing, William White and Samuel Vaughan; and Secretaries James Hutchinson, John Foulke, and two others. 

Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society in 1743 in Philadelphia, patterning it after the Royal Society of London.  Its purpose was the promotion of the study of science and the practical arts of agriculture, engineering, trades, and manufactures.  Subjects of today’s “philosophy” were generally excluded from the societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the word “philosophy” meant to them “love of knowledge”, and was essentially the equivalent of today’s “science”.

Interest in the society waned after the first few years, then sprang up the American Society.  Its success revived interest in the American Philosophical Society and eventually the two merged.  At their first meeting on January 2, 1769, Benjamin Franklin was elected their president, and was re-elected annually until his death in 1790, even though he was frequently absent in Europe. 

This photocopy was made of the original document, owned by Spotswood Hunt, which he loaned to the William Madison Randall Library for an exhibit in May 1969.  

It has been designated Accession Number 11 of the Manuscripts Collection, Special Collections Department, William Madison Randall Library, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, North Carolina 28403-3297. 

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