Lot 218

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Lot 218
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Express Rider Brought News of the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga 1775 Signed by O.Ellsworth
Express Rider Brought News of the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga 1775 Signed by O.Ellsworth
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Description:

Express Rider Brought News of the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga 1775 Signed by O.Ellsworth

Oliver Ellsworth of the Connecticut Committee of the Pay Table wrote and signed this order, instructing Connecticut Treasurer John Lawrence to pay Thomas Seymour, also of the Pay Table, £11..18..4, which Seymour had paid to Elijah Bennett in May 1775, when he arrived with news of the capture of Fort Ticonderoga.

A small force of American patriots led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had surprised the small British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775 and taken over the fort. The following day, they seized nearby Fort Crown Point.

Bennett, from nearby Castleton, Vermont, carried the first letters and dispatches from Fort Ticonderoga to Governor Jonathan Trumbull and members of the Connecticut Assembly. The government of Connecticut then employed him as an express rider between Ticonderoga and other points and Connecticut until May 1776. This payment to Thomas Seymour reimburses him for the first of seventeen payments made to Bennett by Connecticut between May 1775 and May 1776.

From November 1775 to January 1776, Colonel Henry Knox led a "noble train of artillery" consisting of 59 cannon from Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point nearly three hundred miles to Boston to break the impasse and force the British to evacuate the city in March 1776. Fort Ticonderoga served as a base for the American invasion of Quebec later in 1775. The Americans held the fort until July 1777, when a British force under General John Burgoyne forced their withdrawal.

In October, Bennett carried a letter from General George Washington at Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Governor Trumbull warning the governor that a small fleet had left Boston. Washington suspected the fleet intended to bombard some town on the coast, perhaps the coast of Connecticut. The squadron instead went north and attacked Falmouth in the District of Maine on October 18. On November 30, 1775, Washington paid Bennett 18 shillings in "Lawful Money," and the editor of Washington's expense accounts described Bennet as "perhaps the most trusted of all the official express riders" and indicated that this payment was for carrying dispatches to Major-General Philip Schuyler at Fort Ticonderoga.

Ironically, the paper on which this order was written bears a watermark of the British crown and the letters "GR" for George Rex, King George III of Great Britain.

OLIVER ELLSWORTH, Autograph Document Signed, Pay order for Thomas Seymour, August 14, 1775, Hartford, Connecticut. 2 pp., 8.25" x 4.25". Expected folds; general toning; very good.

Complete Transcript
Sir / Pay Thomas Seymour Esqr Eleven Pounds Eighteen Shilling & four pence mony in Bills – it being for that Sum by him advanced to Elijah Bennit towards his Services & Expence as Post Rider from Ticonderoga to this Colony &c as ⅌ sd Bennets Acct & Rect and charge the same to Acct of the Colony Connecticutt. Augst 14th 1775.
£11.18.4
} Comtee
Olivr Ellsworth }
Jno Lawrence Esqr Treasurr

[Endorsement:]
Hartford 15 August 1775
Recd of Treasurer Lawrence Eleven Pounds Eighteen Shillings and four pence being the Contents for my Father Thomas Seymour Esqr
⅌ Edward Seymour

Historical Background
The Pay Table handled the military finances for the colony of Connecticut during the American Revolution. Also known as the Committee of Four, its members at different times included Oliver Ellsworth, Jedidiah Huntington, William Moseley, Hezekiah Rogers, Jesse Root, Thomas Seymour III, Fenn Wadsworth, Eleazer Wales, Ezekiel Williams, John Chenward, Oliver Wolcott Jr., and Samuel Wyllys.

Oliver Ellsworth (1745-1807) was born in Windsor, Connecticut, and entered Yale College in 1762. At the end of his second year, he transferred to the College of New Jersey (Princeton), from which he graduated in 1766. He studied the law for four years, gained admission to the bar in 1771, and married Abigail Wolcott in 1772. In 1777, he became state's attorney for Hartford County, served on the Pay-Table Committee, and helped manage Connecticut's war expenditures during the Revolutionary War. In 1777, he was also named a delegate to the Continental Congress from Connecticut, a position he held until the end of the war. He served on the Supreme Court of Errors in Connecticut from 1785 and later on the Connecticut Superior Court. In 1787, voters selected Ellsworth as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he helped draft the Constitution and created with Roger Sherman the Connecticut Compromise between large and small states. He left the convention before signing the final document but worked for its ratification. He served as one of the first two U.S. Senators from Connecticut from March 1789 to March 1796, when President George Washington nominated Ellsworth as the third Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a position he held from 1796 to 1800. After traveling to France as a special envoy to end the Quasi-War, he resigned from the Court in December 1800 because of illness.

Thomas Seymour III (1735-1829) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College in 1755. He married Mary Ledyard, with whom he had seven children. He received appointment as King's Attorney in 1767 and served as State's Attorney after the Revolutionary War. Commissioned as a captain of militia in 1773, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1774 and led three regiments of light cavalry in support of the Continental Army in New York during the summer of 1776. The General Assembly appointed Seymour in April 1775 to be one of the Committee on the Pay Table. He represented Hartford in the Connecticut General Assembly at eighteen sessions between 1774 and 1793 and served as Speaker five times. He served in the Connecticut Senate from 1793 to 1803. He also served as mayor of Hartford from its incorporation in 1784 until his resignation in 1812.

John Lawrence (1719-1802) served as treasurer of the colony and then the state of Connecticut for twenty years from 1769 to 1789. During the Revolutionary War, he was also commissioner of loans for the United States.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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