Notes
See attached history files. According to the 1/17/1923 MS, "[t]he statue for a number of years stood in a niche on the second floor of the old Sentinel building" and then the lobby of the paper's new building, erected 1863. The 5/9/1930 MS says that the statue had "been with the Sentinel for at least sixty years," suggesting that the paper's publishers and proprietors T.D. Jermain and H. Brightman "got the statue for their new building, or perhaps a few years later," or that "John O'Rourke, the first editor, in 1837, may have been Ben's first owner, or other editors who followed." The Sentinel erected another new building on Mason St. in 1893, and "two niches were left in the second story stone facade": "one ... for Ben and the other for a proposed similar bronze of Johannes Guttenberg," though "Johannes appears never to have been acquired and as far as is known Ben was not mounted within his niche either."
According to the 5/12/1930 MS, the statue arrived at the new Sentinel building on Mason St. in 1863, after Sentinel publishers Jermain and Brighton "decided to have a statue of Franklin." According to this history, "Ben was placed in a third story niche on the outside of the building and there he stayed until 1892," when he was moved to the lobby of the next new Sentinel building.
The Sentinel donated the statue to the Milwaukee Public Museum on either May 9, 1930 or March 23, 1933.