Foundation History in the United States
The foundation idea came to America with the English diaspora. Puritans preached benevolence (John Winthrop's sermon “A Modell [sic] of Christian Charity” is an example) and practiced it, particularly in the construction and support of their churches. It was that emphatically unpuritanical Benjamin Franklin, however, who undertook the first substantial American experiment with the foundation concept. As Weaver (1967) has chronicled, Franklin's will left bequests to Boston and Philadelphia of £1,000 for two hundred years. For the first hundred years, the funds (each worth $4,444.49 at the time of Franklin's death in 1790) were to be loaned out at 5 percent to “young married artificers of good character.” ...
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