To George Washington from Stephen Brown, 27 April 1776
From Stephen Brown
Boston, 27 April 1776. Submits accounts against the Continental army for services as a physician to Benedict Arnold’s expeditionary force.1 “On the twenty third of Septr [I] was passing up Kennebeck River & was call’d upon by Mr Joseph Farnsworth Commissary of the Preventials (bound on an Expedition to Quebeck) to attend all the Sick that came within the Sphere of my Visiting up & down the River . . . I according to his Desire attend’d all that came within the compass of my Practice & travell’d even to the Distance of fifty Miles up River above Fort Hallifax & twenty Miles down River at Brumswick Fort with the utmost Fatigue the Roads being bad & difficult to find.”2
ADS, DLC:GW. This petition was enclosed in Artemas Ward’s letter to GW of this date.
1. The three accounts enclosed with Brown’s petition respectively total £8.19.6, £12.0.2, and £14.6.8. Brown testified to the truth of each account before a justice of the peace in Boston on 27 April (DLC:GW). For GW’s response to this petition, see his letter to Artemas Ward, 9 May 1776.
2. Joseph Farnsworth (1744–1794) served as commissary for Arnold’s expedition and later was commissary at Bennington, Vt., where he lived. Fort Halifax, built in 1754, was at the junction of the Sebasticook and Kennebec rivers, now the site of Winslow, Maine.