Philadelphia Contributionship | A 1760s Philadelphia fire insurance policy, the earliest American document of its kind in private hands

Philadelphia Contributionship

[Fire insurance Policy] No. 333. This Instrument or Policy Witnesseth, that 'Edward Shippen Jun. Esq. on behalf of Edward Shippen Sen'.... by these Presents becoming a Member of the Philadelphia Contributionship for ensuring houses, &c. from Loss by Fire within the City of Philadelphia... this Seventh Day of November... 1769. [Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, circa 1765]

Folio letter press document, (387 x 240 mm). Accomplished in a clerical hand, signed and sealed by Joseph Fox, Samuel Shoemaker, Alexander Haston (or Huston), and signed by witnesses Josiah Davenport, Matthew Clarkson, with manuscript annotation to verso; old folds, some splits along the folds, small losses at edges not affecting text, an area of pale dampstaining along the central fold, and three thin holes along vertices of folds, affecting around six printed letters and two manuscript letters. Archivally matted.

A rare fire insurance policy, no. 333, from the Philadelphia Contributionship for Insuring Houses from Loss by Fire, America's first successful fire insurance company, founded by Benjamin Franklin and his associates in 1752. The policy is for a house on Fourth Street, between Walnut and Spruce, owned by the prominent lawyer Edward Shippen IV.

After agreeing on the document's wording, in May 1752 the directors of the Contributionship requested that their newly-elected president, Benjamin Franklin, print the policies. The minutes show that the directors ordered additional batches in 1754, 1758, 1759, and in 1765. As such, 1765 likely is when this form was printed. Comparison between this policy and a policy from 1752 (Miller 564) shows that the type was left standing, with only minor changes. For example, we note that in line 2 "insuring" was changed to "ensuring" (though on this form the compositor misplaced the "n" before the "e," causing the clerk to have to cross out the incorrectly printed letter and rewrite it in manuscript) and that "his" has been repeatedly removed from the printing, allowing the clerk to fill in the document accurately for both men and women property owners.

The group of three seals, all quite good impressions, are the symbol of the Philadelphia Contributionship. Franklin's friend, the eminent silversmith Philip Syng, designed the seal, which shows two people's four hands grasping each other's wrists, representing the fireman's carrying grip — "a wonderfully suitable symbol that suggests fire, support, and strength" (Lemay, Vol. III, p. 300). The seal was also fashioned into lead plaques, so that policyholders could hang them up on their houses and advertise their membership.

The document is signed by a number of Philadelphia notables. First, it is signed by Josiah Davenport, Franklin's nephew. His inn, "The Bunch of Grapes," was the location where the company held meetings in the late 1760s and 1770s, quite possibly where this document was witnessed. Second, it is signed by Matthew Clarkson, the Contributionship's clerk. This is likely the earliest surviving evidence of Clarkson as clerk; the Library Company cites a March 1770 ad listing him as the clerk for the Contributionship, and gives his dates in the role as 1770–1776. Lastly, the policy was witnessed and signed by Joseph Fox, Samuel Shoemaker, and Alexander Haston (or Huston).

The policyholders were Edward Shippen Junior, evidently Edward Shippen IV, and his father, Edward Shippen III. The Shippens were a long-standing merchant family in Philadelphia, with multiple generations holding the office of mayor, including Edward Shippen III. Their townhouse on the West side of 4th St between Spruce and Walnut, no longer extant, was located just across Locust Street from the still-standing Shippen-Wistar house. They first insured a part of the building in 1752 as policy 103. They took out policy 333 on "the South Division of the House" in 1755. The fact that there were two policies on the same building could account for the clerk's strikethrough of the words "being reinsurance," at the end of the property description in the document. The original insurance surveys for the house survive and are viewable in the Contributionship's extensive online archive.

Edward IV (1729–1806), a lawyer by trade, held multiple public offices in Philadelphia until the Revolution. He attempted to stay neutral during the war but, in the immediate aftermath, was stripped of his offices, his reputation marred by his daughter Peggy's marriage to Benedict Arnold. In fact, Peggy and Arnold were married in the Shippen townhouse on 4th Street on 8 April 1779.

Rare: no other eighteenth-century Philadelphia Contributionship policy appears in Rare Book Hub. Miller notes only a single 1752 example in the collection of the Philadelphia Contributionship. As such, this is evidently the earliest Philadelphia Contributionship document, and the earliest American fire insurance policy, in private hands.

REFERENCES

Miller 564; Lemay, Life, III:298–303; (https://librarycompany.org/2023/08/21/shareholder-spotlight-matthew-clarkson/); (https://1752.com/2021/04/21/april-15-1771-at-the-philadelphia-contributionship/); (https://archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/penn-people/biography/edward-shippen/); (https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/contributionship/ho_display.cfm?RecordId=CONTRIB-S00333)