Oliver Ellsworth
Hartford, CT, July 7, 1777
O. Ellsworth Signs Pay Order for Militia Colonel Just After 1st Anniv of Independence!
MDS

OLIVER ELLSWORTH, Manuscript Document Signed, Pay order for Ebenezer Root, July 7, 1777, Hartford, Connecticut. 2 pp., 8.375" x 6.75". Expected folds; general toning; very good.

Oliver Ellsworth of the Connecticut Committee of the Pay-Table signed this order, instructing Connecticut Treasurer John Lawrence to pay Ebenezer Root ?2..1..3 for riding express to carry dispatches from General Israel Putnam to Governor Jonathan Trumbull. Root (1761-1785) was born in Coventry, married Mary Parker in 1784, and died at sea after June 1785.

Complete Transcript
"Sir,
Pay Ebenr Root Two Pounds One Shilling & three Pence for going an Express with Dispatches from Genl Putnam to his Excellency the Governor, and charge the State
Hartford July 7th 1777
?2..1..3
}
} Comtee
O Ellsworth }
To John Lawrence Esqr
Treasurer

[Endorsement (on verso:]
Recd 7th July 1777 of Treasr Lawrence Two Pounds one Shillings & Three pence Contents
? Ebenezer Root

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, William Pitkin, 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.

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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8.375" x 6.75"