A HISTORICAL COLLECTION, FROM OFFICIAL RECORDS, FILES, &c., OF THE PART SUSTAINED BY CONNECTICUT, DURING THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION. WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING IMPORTANT LETTERS, DEPOSITIONS, &c., WRITTEN DURING THE WAR. COMPILED BY ROYAL R. HINMAN, " SECRETARY OF STATE. HARTFORD: PRINTED BY E. GLEASON. 1842. 5263 C545 Entered according to act of Congress, April 23d, in the year 1842, by ROYAL R. HINMAN, in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of Connecticut. PREFACE. Ir was with reluctance that the compiler of this collection of Historical facts, undertook his herculean task; he had to wade through an immense mass of records, old files of petitions, letters, depositions, reports, &c. &c., many of which papers had been illy preserved in the offices of the Secretary of State and Comptroller; and many were mutilated and torn, and difficult to decipher. The compiler flatters himself that he has not performed a useless task to the State. Many of the facts contained in this collection, will be found new and inter. esting to most of the present generation; the whole work will give a livelier character to the deeds of their ancestors during this eventful struggle for liberty and independence. The work contains about 100 pages of general history, so far as Connecticut was concerned in the war of the revolution. Then follows an epitome, not only of all the acts of the General Assembly, relating to the war, but also of the acts of the Governor and his Council of Safety, or Council of War, until May, 1778, as taken from the original records in the Secretary's office. The language of the records and files, and in some instances the orthography, has been faithfully followed by the compiler. Connecticut, though one of the great producing States during the war, not only of provisions, but of men and money to carry on the contest, has never had her full merit recognized, in any historical notice yet published, of that eventful time that so thoroughly tried men's souls. It has, therefore, been the object of the compiler to. rescue from oblivion, a sufficient amount of authentic facts, to place the citizens of our own State on their true ground, as among the earlier, most zealous, and efficient movers of that physical and moral machinery, which tore America from the cruel embrace of England. M109580 The compiler is satisfied from the investigations he has already made, that no State supplied more men, money, and means of every kind, according to her ability, than did Connecticut; or did more to hasten on the glorious issue of the revolutionary war. Her troops were found in nearly every action in all the States. She not only furnished her full quota, and more than her quota of the materiel of war, but furnished some of the wisest heads, who planned and executed the great deeds of that important time. Her Putnam was on Bunker Hill; her Spencer in Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, &c.; her Parsons, Wolcotts, Huntingtons, Griswolds, Shermans, Ellsworth, Davenports, Bishops, Wooster, Silliman, Dean, and a host of others, with Governor Trumbull at their head, were foremost in the service-in our State Legislature, and in the Councils of the Continental Congress. Should errors be found in this work, the reader would readily excuse them, could he see the perfect chaos from which the compiler has extracted the facts here published. To such gentlemen in this city, and other parts of the State, who have aided in collecting facts, for this work, the compiler tenders them his sincere thanks, because they have been instrumental in preserving some historical facts, for the benefit of their State and country. HARTFORD, April 28th, A. D. 1842. R. R. HINMAN. CALIFORNS AMERICAN REVOLUTION. A GENERAL VIEW OF CONNECTICUT AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE Colony of Connecticut, in 1775, was divided into the six following Counties: Hartford, New Haven, New London, Fairfield, Windham, and Litchfield. These were sub-divided into 76 townships, which by the census taken in 1774, were found to contain the following aggregate of inhabitants :-Whites, 191,448. Blacks, 6,562. Total, 198,010. Westmoreland, it will be noticed, was included in this census. It contained only 1,922 inhabitants in 1774, but increased rapidly after that period. When the massacre of Wyoming took place (in 1778) the population was estimated at 5,000. The General Assembly of Connecticut, at their session held at Hartford, in January, 1771, resolved that the lands west of the river Delaware, and in the latitude of that part of the colony of Connecticut east of New York were contained in the boundaries and description of the Charter of King Charles II. to the colony of Connecticut; and as many people had settled on a part of the lands at or near a place called Wyoming, under a claim of the Connecticut colony, they applied to Connecticut to take them under her protection and government. As there were many persons of suspicious and bad characters, who had escaped from justice and resorted to said place to carry on their villanous designs with impunity, to the disgust and annoyance of the good people of the settlement; the Assembly therefore, in January, 1774, enacted that the inhabitants within the bounds of Connecticut colony, on the west side of the river Delaware, were constituted a distinct town, with all the privileges of other towns in the colony of Connecticut. The town was bounded east by the Delaware |