Pay Order Signed Oliver Ellsworth Days Before the Battle of Bunker Hill

Oliver Ellsworth and Thomas Seymour of the Connecticut Committee of the Pay Table signed this order, instructing Connecticut Treasurer John Lawrence to pay Samuel Burr £1..19..0 for horse hire.

Five days later, British soldiers from Boston attacked American forces in Charlestown at Breed's Hill in the engagement that became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Although the British won a tactical victory, it was a sobering experience, as they incurred heavy casualties before driving the Americans from the Charlestown Peninsula. It also convinced the British commanders of the need to reinforce with Hessian mercenaries in their effort to assert control over the rebellious American colonies.

[REVOLUTIONARY WAR.] Oliver Ellsworth and Thomas Seymour III, Manuscript Document Signed, Pay order for Samuel Burr, June 12, 1775, Hartford, Connecticut. 2 pp., 8.5" x 5". Expected folds; irregular edges; very good.

Complete Transcript
Sir, Pay Mr Saml Burr One pound nineteen Shilling Lawful money – it being for horse hire by him supplied for the Use of the Colony & Charge the same to the Acct of the Colony of Connectt:
Hartford June 12th 1775
£1.19.0Thomas Seymour} Comtee
Olivr Ellsworth}
To Jn Lawrence Esqr / Treasurr

[Endorsement:]
Hartford 12th June 1775
Recd of Treasurer Lawrence One pound nineteen Shillings Lawful money being the Contents of the within ordr
⅌ Saml Burr

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 the 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.

Samuel Burr (1745-1792) was born in Hartford County, Connecticut. He married Rebecca Stillman (1747-1831), and they had at least five children. He was a merchant in Hartford, first with his brother and from 1775 on his own.

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.

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