THIS IS THE FIRST of several volumes of biographical sketches of members of the American Philosophical Society elected between 1743, when Franklin proposed it, and 1769, when it was established on its present foundation by the union of several earlier institutions. It is the first such collection of biographies and, indeed, the only systematic attempt to collect and preserve data on the lives of the members. During most of its history the Society kept no biographical records. Occasionally in the nineteenth century biographical memoirs were printed in the Proceedings, and one or two attempts were made to issue a volume of memoirs like the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. Since 1937, however, obituary notices (when potential authors responded to requests for them) have been printed in the Society's Year Book; since 1991 they have appeared in the Proceedings. Obviously no biographical dictionary is needed for Franklin, Rittenhouse, John Dickinson, and some ten or a dozen other great and famous characters whom most persons have in mind when they think of the eighteenth-century Society. But the great majority of the early members were not men of Franklin's caliber and reputation. They were merchants, shopkeepers, mechanics, artisans, and small farmers, with a leaven of physicians, lawyers, and clergymen-persons like Isaac Bartram, Clement and Owen Biddle, Benjamin Davis (or Davies), Joseph Paschall, and James Pearson, about whom little if anything has been written and published. Yet these lesser-known persons are the ones who attended meetings, paid their dues, served on committees, and promoted the Society's objects in many ways over many years. It seems that before historians describe the Society confidently, as they often do, as dignified, venerable, august, eminent, or elitist, they should understand, as Brooke Hindle does in The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, just who the philosophers were and how often-or even whether they showed any interest in the Society's activities. That is a reason why this work was begun. To the degree that these sketches are more than a contribution to an institution's history they may also add something to the general history of eighteenth-century America.