Description:

Revolutionary War
Hartford, CT, April 18, 1777
Revolutionary War 1777 Encouragement Pay for Enlistment in Continental Army, Capt. Titus Watson, Valley Forge
Partially printed DS

Revolutionary War. Partially Printed Document Signed, "O. Ellsworth," for the committee, 1p, on laid paper measuring 7.5" x 6", Hartford, Connecticut, April 18, 1777, being an encouragement pay order to treasurer John Lawrence. Docketing and endorsement at verso. Creases and flattened folds with a tiny bit of separation at left edge. Lightly toned. In near fine condition.

In full:

"Sir, Please to pay to Captain Titus Watson the Sum of One Hundred Pounds to pay out (as the additional Encouragement of Ten Pounds granted by this State) for inlisting his own Company, in the Continental Battalion to be commanded by Heman Swift Esq Colonel; and to render his Account, and charge the State. Hartford, April 18th Anno Domini, 1777. O. Ellsworth Com'tee.

£.100.
John Lawrence Esq; Treasurer."

Endorsement at verso, in full:
"Hartford 18 April 1777 Rec'd One Hundred Pounds Contents.
Titus Watson Capt."

Titus Watson (1746-1821) was born in Litchfield County, Connecticut, and was a farmer by occupation. He fought in the American Revolutionary War from Chambly, Quebec, to Monmouth, New Jersey. He entered service in the Lexington Alarm in April 1775 as a sergeant in the march to Boston. He was then commissioned captain and served as such in Colonel Charles Burrall's Connecticut Regiment from February 1776 until February 1777. As a captain in Huntington's Brigade of the 7th Connecticut, he took the Oath of Allegiance at Valley Forge in the spring of 1778. Watson then served as captain in Colonel Heman Swift's Connecticut Regiment until February 1781, when he was honorably discharged by General George Washington at West Point, New York. He is the older brother of Captain James Watson (1750-1806), U.S. Senator from New York.

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 (now Princeton University) from which he graduated in 1766. He studied the law for four years and gained admission to the bar in 1771. In 1777, he became state's attorney for Hartford County, served on the Pay-Table Committee, helped manage Connecticut's war expenditures during the Revolutionary War, and was named a delegate to the Continental Congress from Connecticut, a position he held until the end of the war. Ellsworth 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, though he left the convention before signing the final document. 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.

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.

Heman Swift (1733-1814) was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, known as General Washington's Colonel. He was a Colonel in the Connecticut State Regiment from July to December 1776, the 7th Connecticut Regiment from January 1777 to January 1781, and the 2nd Connecticut Regiment from January 1781 to June 1783. He was brevetted Brigadier-General on September 30, 1783, and was discharged in December 1783. Swift was an Original Member of the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati and was an associate justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1790 to 1802.

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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  • Dimensions: 7.5" x 6"
  • Medium: Partially printed DS

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