Description:

Pay Order Signed by Constitution Architect and Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth

In this pay order, Oliver Ellsworth and John Chenward of the Pay-Table order the treasurer of Connecticut to pay Lt. Richard Ransom (1740-1811) £7..8s..5d and charge it to the state. Ransom served as a lieutenant and later as a captain in regiments from Lyme, Connecticut.

OLIVER ELLSWORTH, Document Signed, Pay Order for Lt. Richard Ransom, October 24, 1777, [Hartford, Connecticut]. 2 pp., 9.5" x 6.125". Expected folds; some fold tears and compression to left edge, not affecting text; very good.

Complete Transcript
Sir
Pay Lt Richard Ransom Seven pounds Eight Shillings & five pence & Charge the State. Octr 24, 1777.
John Chenward }
O Ellsworth } Comtee
£7.8.5 }
To / John Lawrence, Esqr / Treasr

[Endorsement on verso:]
Recd of Treasr Lawrence £7.8.5 Contents
⅌ Nathel Matson

[Docketing:]
No 9086 / Ordr / Lt Richd Ransom / £7.8.5 / Octr 24, 1777 / Auditd Decr 21, 1778 / J. Treadwell

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.

John Chenward (1733-1805) was a Hartford merchant and served as a member of the Connecticut Pay Table in 1778 and 1779.

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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