Answer: The Friends of Franklin, Inc. 

The Friends of Franklin, Inc. (FOF), headquartered in Philadelphia, is an international membership society for individuals interested in promoting the study and scholarship of Benjamin Franklin. In the early 1990s, FOF began compiling a then-current genealogy of Franklin’s descendants. This “Descendants Project,” which was led by Elly Fitzig, eventually identified over 1500 direct descendants.

Between about 1992 and 2001, several FOF members, including Franklin Bache Satterthwaite and Larry Tise, sent out letters to people identified as Franklin’s descendants. Many people responded by sending letters with genealogical information linking then to Franklin, as well as copies of family documents proving their connections. A new (and very large) version of Franklin's tree resulted from the project.

HSP's small collection of records from the Friends of Franklin, Inc. (#3117) contains a variety of papers from its Descendants Project, including letters from respondents of a survey concerning Franklin's genealogy, older versions of Franklin’s genealogy, historical records pertaining to the Bache-Lott-Birt family, recent obituaries and biographies of some of Franklin descendants, as well as other papers.