Franklin A. Wilson to Charles Stetson, April 6, 1852, correspondence. Charles P. Stetson Letters.
Franklin A. Wilson, a native of Bangor, Maine, was in the Class of 1854 at Bowdoin College where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Peucinian Society, and Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He frequently corresponded with his friend Charles P. Stetson, also from Bangor, who was a member of the Class of 1855 at Yale University. In this charming letter, Wilson congratulates Stetson on receiving a translation prize, gossips about classmates, and discusses prohibition—the “Maine Law” banning the sale of alcohol had passed just ten months prior—though most notably, Wilson describes a “prank” the medical students played with a cadaver. In his retelling of the incident, Wilson clearly expresses his disdain for the medical students and their dubious ethics, alluding to a known tension between Bowdoin undergraduates and medical students.