Biography
William Franklin was the last royal Governor of New Jersey and the loyalist son of Benjamin Franklin. When the Revolution came he refused to abandon the Crown, and in June 1776 the New Jersey Provincial Congress had him arrested as “a virulent enemy to this country.” Made a prisoner of the new state governments, he was held in Connecticut for more than two years — paroled at first, then, after he was accused of violating his parole, confined in May 1777 in solitary confinement in the Litchfield jail, in a cell normally kept for prisoners condemned to death. He was released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, and after the war lived the rest of his life in exile in England, permanently estranged from his father.
Case
Litchfield Gaol