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Ticonderoga! Oliver Ellsworth for Express Rider from Crown Point Shortly After Americans Captured Fort Ticonderoga
Ticonderoga! Oliver Ellsworth for Express Rider from Crown Point Shortly After Americans Captured Fort Ticonderoga
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Ticonderoga! Oliver Ellsworth for Express Rider from Crown Point Shortly After Americans Captured Fort Ticonderoga

Oliver Ellsworth, William Pitkin, and Thomas Seymour of the Connecticut Committee of the Pay Table signed this order, instructing Connecticut Treasurer John Lawrence to pay Elijah Bennett £10 as a post rider from Crown Point, New York, located a few miles north of Fort Ticonderoga on the western shore of Lake Champlain.

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 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. The order indicates that Bennett delivered messages from Crown Point to Lebanon, where Governor Jonathan Trumbull lived. A store near Trumbull's house served as his war office during much of the Revolutionary War, and the Council of Safety frequently convened there. This payment is the third of seventeen made to Bennett by the Connecticut Pay Table between May 1775 and May 1776.

In October, Bennet 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.

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.

OLIVER ELLSWORTH, William Pitkin, and Thomas Seymour III, Manuscript Document Signed, Pay order for Elijah Bennett, June 20, 1775, [Hartford, Connecticut]. 2 pp., 8" x 6.25". Expected folds; general toning; some edge loss not affecting text.

Complete Transcript
Sir / Pay to Elijah Bennett Post Rider from Crown Point to Lebanon as an Express, The Sum of Ten pounds money in Bills & Charge the same to acct. of Colony of Connecticut. June 20th 1775.
Wm Pitkin }
Thos Seymour } Comtee
Olivr Ellsworth }
To John Lawrence Esqr / Treasurer

[Endorsement:]
Hartford 20 June 1775
Recd of Treasurer Lawrence the Contents of the within Order
⅌ Elijah Bennett

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.

William Pitkin (1725-1789) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son and namesake of a colonial governor of Connecticut, who held that office from 1766 until his death in 1769. The younger Pitkin married Abigail Church (1728-1807). He was an officer in the French & Indian War and a member of the Council of Safety during the Revolutionary War. He also served as assistant to and clerk of the Connecticut General Assembly and as judge of the Hartford Superior Court.

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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