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Lot 77
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Constitution Architect Oliver Ellsworth Signs a Pay Order for Supply of Ammunition
Constitution Architect Oliver Ellsworth Signs a Pay Order for Supply of Ammunition
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Description:

Ellsworth Oliver



Constitution Architect Oliver Ellsworth Signs a Pay Order for Supply of Ammunition 

 

Document Signed, Pay Order for the Selectmen of New Fairfield, January 13, 1776, Connecticut. Also signed by Thomas Seymour and Ezekiel Williams. 2 pp., 8.125" x 4.25"  Expected folds; very good.

 

Complete Transcript

Sir,

Pay the Select Men of New Fairfield Sum of Three pounds Eight shillings & four pence, by the hand of Capt Wm G. Hubell for Amunition supplied Capt Capt Beardsley’s Compy in the Colonys Service as ? Aut & charge the Colony.

Jany 13th 1776                                                 T Seymour       }

  £3.8.4.                                                           Ezl Williams     } Comtee

                                                                        O Ellsworth     }

Jno Lawrence, Esq, Treasur

 

[Endorsement:

                                                                        Hartford Janry 13th 1776.

Recd of Treasurer Lawrence Three pounds Eight shillings and Four pence being the Contents; for the Select Men of New Fairfield

                                                                        ? Wm G Hubbell

[Docketing:

No 2820 / Order / Select Men Nw Fairfield / Datd 13th Janry 1776 / £3..8..4 / 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 the Select Men of New Fairfield for ammunition that they had provided to a Connecticut company.

 

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 1877, 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 at Hartford 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.

 

Ezekiel Williams (1729-1818) was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, and moved in 1752 to Wethersfield, where he became a successful merchant. In 1760, he married Prudence Stoddard. He served as sheriff of Hartford County from 1767 to 1789 and as a member of the Committee of the Pay Table from 1775.  He also served as a member of a committee in charge of prisoners of war in the state and became commissary of prisoners in 1777. His younger brother was Declaration of Independence signer William Williams (1731-1811).

 

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.

 

 


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