News

June 10, 2009

Berwick group nets $557K for Franklin almanac

RICHARD PYLE Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK — When members of the local historical society in Berwick found a dusty, long-ignored copy of Benjamin Franklin’s 18th-century “Poor Richard” almanac on their shelves a few months ago, they decided to find out whether it could be real.

The answer was yes — emphatically confirmed on Tuesday at the Sotheby’s auction house, where an anonymous bidder paid $556,500 for the 1733 edition, the second highest price ever for a book printed in America.

That was big news in Berwick, an old manufacturing city of 10,000 residents, where Franklin, using the pseudonym Richard Saunders, printed thousands of copies of his almanac between 1733 and 1760, dispensing advice and aphorisms along with “lunations, eclipses, judgment of the weather” and other data relevant to the 40-degree latitude “from Newfoundland to South Carolina.”

The celebration for historical society members began on the 150-mile trip home from New York. “We’re on the second bottle of champagne,” society president Thomas McLaughlin said when reached on his cell phone aboard the bus taking 14 society members back to Berwick.

The book’s value rose sharply after the Library Company of Philadelphia, which Franklin founded, determined the book not only was real but also was one of only three 1733 copies known to exist.

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