Description: Ellsworth Oliver


Oliver Ellsworth, Constitution Architect &Chief Justice, Signs Pay Order to Early Newspaper Publisher Ebenezer Watson for Retrieving Sick Soldier





OLIVER ELLSWORTH, Document Signed, Pay Order for John McLean, April 11, 1776, Connecticut. Also signed by Thomas Seymour. 2 pp., 8" x 4.25"Expected folds; some tears; loss of paper on right margin, not affecting text; good.





Complete Transcript

Sir,

Pay Mr Ebenezar Watson Seven pounds four shillings & eight pence, for going after a sick soldier in the Connecticut Troops & his Expence, as pr Aut & charge the Colony. Hartford July 1t 1776

£7.4.8.                                                         T Seymour   } Comtee

                                                                      O Ellsworth   }

Jno Lawrence, Esq Treasr





[Endorsement: Sick Bills to Copy

[Endorsement: Recd July 1st 1776 of Treasurer Lawrence Seven pounds four shillings & eight pence the Contents

                                                                      ? Ebenr Watson

[Docketing:

No 5064 / Order / Mr Ebenr Watson / £7.4.8 / Datd 1st July 1776 / aud: Septr 1st 1777 / J Hamlin





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 Ebenezer Watson for retrieving a sick soldier from the Connecticut army. Ebenezer Watson (1744-1777) became a partner in publishing the Hartford Courant in 1767. He later became sole publisher, and the newspaper grew to have the largest circulation in the colonies with 8,000 copies. After his death of smallpox in September 1777, his tombstone read, His heart was benevolent he was kind to the distressed & an advocate of the injured his life exhibited the Marks of an honest Man Friendship to the rights of human natureAt his death which happened in the years of vigor & usefulness he received the distinguished Eulogy the undissembled grief of a numerous Acquaintances."





Watson’s second wife Hannah continued to publish the newspaper with the aid of George Goodwin. After the mill that provided paper burned down during the winter of 1777-1778, the General Assembly authorized a state-wide lottery to rescue the newspaper. At the time, it was the only newspaper in the colonies not under British control.









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.





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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