General Orders, 8 April 1779
General Orders
Head-Quarters Middle-Brook Thursday April 8th 1779.
Parole Oleron—C. Signs Olinda— Ormus.
A board of General Officers to be composed of Majrs Genl Greene (if present), Lord Stirling, St Clair and De Kalb and of Brigadiers General Knox, Woodford and Muhlenberg is to sit tomorrow morning ten ôClock at the Orderly-Office to take into consideration the rank and an arrangement of the officers in the Maryland line and to state the same: The Commander in Chief will lay before the board all the papers he has concerning the subject and he hopes they will fix in the arrangement and report which they make, the rank & station of every officer and the dates their commissions should bear.1
The Surgeons of the Army are requested to make a return of their Mates, Medicines and Instruments to the Director General at Doctor Draper’s quarters at Bound-Brook.
The commanding officers of such regiments as have no Surgeons will make report thereof to the Director at the same time and place.
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
Adj. Gen. Alexander Scammell’s orderly book entry for this date includes the following additional general orders: “A Sub., Corpl and ten privates from the 1st M[aryland] Brigade, a Serjt & ten from the second to be sent without their arms, furnish’d with three Days Provision, to join the fatigue Party on the Road to Trenton. A Serjt and twelve men from the 1st pennsylvania Brigade for Fatigue Tomorrow” (orderly book, 22 Dec. 1778–26 June 1779, DNA: RG 93, Orderly Books, 1775–1783, vol. 28).
1. For the background of this project to settle rank in the Maryland line, and the disputes over GW’s authority to determine rank, see Nathaniel Ewing to GW, 9 March, and notes 4 and 5 to that document; see also GW to a Board of General Officers, 9 April, and to Otho Holland Williams et al., 10 May.