On this day 250 years ago—May 30, 1775—the colony of Connecticut was building an army. Now that the American colonies were at war with Great Britain, they needed regiments whose soldiers had committed to serving for months at a time. Regiments raised for service through the end of the year would sustain the part-time service of militia units and keep pressure on the British.
To build these regiments, thousands of enlisted men were needed, as were more specialized officers. Beyond the commissioned and non-commissioned officers, from colonels to corporals, staff officers were needed for organization, administration, and logistics. Staff officers like the commissary general, who dealt with sourcing and issuing supplies, and the paymaster general, who issued soldiers’ pay, assisted field officers throughout the colony’s regiments.
Every position in the army was important and officers needed to be chosen carefully. Positions that handled money, like paymasters, were treated with extra care. Paymasters were made to sign bonds like this one, dated May 30, 1775. In the bond, David Waterbury Jr., serving not only as colonel of the newly-raised 5th Connecticut Regiment but also as captain and paymaster of one of the regiment’s companies, and Samuel Squire, Waterbury’s brother-in-law and one of Connecticut’s commissaries, agree to pay 3000 pounds to the colony. The bill will be canceled, though, if Waterbury “shall faithfully & justly dispose of all the monies he shall receive out of the publick Treasury for the purpose of Inlisting & paying the soldiers in [said] Company”.
If Waterbury broke his promise and embezzled or misused the money he was given for his soldiers, his punishingly large bill would come due. If he served faithfully and ethically, he would owe the colony nothing. In the end, Waterbury did not have to pay the bond. He served at the head of his regiment through the end of 1775, fighting in the invasion of Canada and faithfully passing on the payroll money he received to his men.
View Waterbury and Squire’s bond (MS.7311, property of Robert Nittolo) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database here.