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Oliver Ellsworth Signed Military Pay Just After Bunker Hill 1775
Oliver Ellsworth Signed Military Pay Just After Bunker Hill 1775
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Description:

Pay Order Signed by Constitution Architect and Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth

OLIVER ELLSWORTH, Document Signed, Pay Order for Eli Leavenworth, July 17, 1775, Hartford, Connecticut. Also signed by Thomas Seymour. 2 pp., 7.75? x 6.25?. Expected folds; a few small pin holes; very good.

Complete Transcript
Sir
    Pay Capt Eli Leavenworth, Paymaster of the 10th Company in the 7th Regiment now to be raisd, Four Hundred Pounds Lawful Mony for the Purpose Inlisting & Paying the Soldiers in sd Company & charge the same to Acct of Colony Connectt.
Hartford July 17th 1775
£400                                          Thos Seymour }
                                                                          } Comtee
                                               Oliver Ellsworth }
To John Lawrence, Esqr
Treasurer

[Verso:]
[Endorsement:]
                                                Hartford 17 July 1775
Recd of Treasurer Lawrence Four Hundred Pounds being the Contents
                                                ? Eli Leavenworth
[Docketing:]
No 1999 / Order / Capt Eli Leavenworth / £400. / July 17th 1775 / Audited / May 13, 1776 / E P

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, Oliver Wolcott Jr., and Samuel Wyllys.

In this pay order, the Pay-Table orders the colony’s treasurer to pay Captain Eli Leavenworth for bounties and pay for new soldiers in the summer of 1775. Eli Leavenworth (1748-1819) of New Haven served as a captain in the 7th Connecticut regiment from July 6 to December 10, 1775, then as captain in the 19th Continental regiment throughout 1776 before serving as captain in the 6th Connecticut in January 1777. Promoted to major in November 1778, Leavenworth served as an intelligence officer to track both spies within the Patriot forces and British movements on Long Island. He retired in January 1781.


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 and also 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 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 state of Connecticut for twenty years from 1769 to 1789. During the Revolutionary War, he was also commissioner of loans for the United States.

From the famous Supreme Court collection of Scott Petersen.


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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