I go to Italian classes at the local high school on Tuesday evenings. Two weeks ago the teacher mentioned that she saw a show that implied that Ben Franklin killed some people and buried them in his house. I had never heard of such a thing.

Before last night’s class I googled “Benjamin Franklin” cadavers and found this link. Evidently Ben was friends with a surgeon named William Hewitt. Franklin probably allowed Hewitt to conduct medical experiments on cadavers in the basement of his house in London. It is not clear where he got the cadavers, whether Ben knew about the rather grisly business, or why he buried the remains in the basement.

William Hewson died at the age of 34, but he accomplished enough in his truncated career to earn the Copley Medal, election to the Royal Society, and a Wikipedia page.

After the Italian class Sue and I always watch Finding Your Roots on PBS. It is just about the only show not on the Esquire Channel that we both can tolerate. Last night’s episode featured three people of Greek descent: Tina Fey, George Stephanopoulos, and David Sedaris. Near the end of the show they traced non-Greek ancestors of Fey and Sedaris. Tina Fey’s fourth or fifth great grandfather was John Hewson, one of America’s original textile manufacturers, who came to America through the intervention of none other than Benjamin Franklin.

I had never met or even heard of anyone named Hewson, which is in itself a little surprising since a different John Hewson was a prominent politician in Australia, and a third John Hewson signed the death warrant for King Charles I. I thought that the two Hewsons whom I encountered must be related. It took some digging, but I discovered here that William did indeed ask Ben Franklin to help John to emigrate to the colonies.

Unlike George Noory, I do believe in coincidences. I have been alive over 24,200 days. On only one of them did I encounter someone named Hewson, and it happened twice.