14

Oliver Ellsworth.

Pay order for a Connecticut company which answered the Lexington Alarm.

Hartford, CT, 10 June 1775
Manuscript Document Signed by Connecticut pay committee members William Pitkin, Thomas Seymour, and Oliver Ellsworth, a pay order addressed to Connecticut Treasurer John Lawrence. One page, 5¼ x 8¼ inches, with docketing and endorsement by payee Lemuel Stoughton on verso dated 20 June; folds, minimal wear.

On the day of the Battle of Lexington, 19 April 1775, post riders were sent throughout the colonies, urging that militia be sent to support the Massachusetts minutemen in their struggle. News reached East Windsor, CT the next day, and on 22 April, Captain Lemuel Stoughton's company was on the march. One of the soldiers later recalled: "On this expedition we bore our own expenses, and lived for the most part of the time on what our wives and mothers put into our knapsacks when we left home." The company returned home in May, although many of them went on to more extensive service in the Continental Army. Here a month after their return, the colony covers their "service & expence in the Alarm":

"Pay to the Selectmen of East Windsor seventy-three pounds, sixteen shillings & three pence lawful money, it being the amount of what is all'd Capt. Lemuel Stoughton & his company for service & expence in the Alarm & charge the same to the acc't of the Colony of Connecticut." 

Most notable among the signers is Oliver Ellsworth (1745-1807), a Founding Father who went on to serve in the Constitutional Convention and as a senator in the First Congress, and spent four years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

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