General Orders, 11 May 1776
General Orders
Head Quarters, New York, May 11th 1776.
Parole, The Congress.Countersign Hampden.
All Officers, non-commissioned Officers and Soldiers, belonging to the regiments at present encamped, are on no pretence (sickness excepted) to lay out of their respective encampments.
Col. Wyllys’s regiment, to march to morrow morning, at eight o’clock, and encamp on the ground, marked out for them in their brigade.
The Regiment and Company of Artillery, to be quarter’d in the Barracks of the upper and lower Batteries, and in the Barracks near the Laboratory—As soon as the Guns are placed in the Batteries to which they are appointed, the Colonel of Artillery, will detach the proper number of officers and men, to manage them—These are to encamp with the Brigades they are posted with.
The Colonel of Artillery, to order all the cannon and musquet Cartridges, to be filled in a room appointed for that purpose, in the upper battery, near the bowling Green Cannon and Musquet Powder, sufficient for the above purpose to be lodged in the Magazine prepar’d to receive it, in the upper battery.
All the Boat Builders, Carpenters and Painters, in the several Regiments and Corps, to be sent to Major General Putnam’s quarters, to morrow morning at Six o’Clock, to receive his orders.
His Excellency has been pleased to appoint, Hugh Hughes Esqr. Assistant, Quarter Master General—he is to be obeyed as such.1
Serjt John Smith, of Capt. Adams’s Company, in Col. Irvine’s Regt2 tried at a late General Court Martial, whereof Col. Huntington was president, for “forging an3 Order on the Commissary General, in the Name of Col. Irvine, with an Intent of defrauding the Continent, in drawing Twenty two shillings and six pence, for rations which were not due”—The Court finding the prisoner guilty of the charge, do sentence him to be reduced to the ranks, and to be mulcted two months pay.
The General approves the above sentence, and orders Col. Irvine to see it put in execution.
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. Hugh Hughes (1727–1802), a leader of the New York Sons of Liberty, was designated by the provincial congress on 15 Feb. 1776 commissary of the Continental stores in and around New York City. His appointment by GW of this date allowed him to continue his duties as a subordinate of GW’s quartermaster general. Hughes proved himself an energetic and dependable staff officer during the next several months, and when the army retreated from New York in November 1776, he remained behind to care for stores deposited at Fishkill and Peekskill. Hughes subsequently became deputy quartermaster general for New York with the rank of colonel. He resigned that office in the spring of 1778 but resumed it two years later and served until the end of 1782. For Hughes’s frustrated attempts after the war to collect the money owed him for his military service, see , 134–35; see also Hughes to Hamilton, 21 Nov. 1790, and note 1, in , 26:581–85.
2. Robert Adams (d. 1776) was commissioned a captain in Col. William Irvine’s 6th Pennsylvania Regiment in January 1776 and was killed by Indians near Île aux Noix, Canada, in June when he and several other members of the regiment left the American camp on the island without their weapons to fish and drink spruce beer at a house on the mainland.
3. The copyist inadvertently wrote “and” on the manuscript.