Orders to Lieutenant Colonel Adam Comstock, 2 February 1777
Orders to Lieutenant Colonel Adam Comstock
[Headquarters, Morristown, 2 February 1777]
Sir,
You will proceed to Rhode Island and use yr utmost Industry and Influence in raising the Regiment on the Continental Establishmt to which You was appointed by the Genl Assembly of that State, on the Condition & Terms prescribed by Resolve of Congress on that subject.
You will appoint some place to which the Recruits may conveniently repair to be disciplined, and omit no Opportunity of informing me of yr Success in this business. Given at Morris Town this 2d day of February 1777.
Go: Washington
LS, in George Johnston’s writing, PWacD.
Adam Comstock (1740–1819) was one of the founders of the East Greenwich Military Independent Company and of the Kentish Guards of Rhode Island in 1774. He was appointed major of Col. Henry Babcock’s Rhode Island state garrison regiment in January 1776, and although he began serving as lieutenant colonel of Col. Christopher Lippitt’s Rhode Island regiment when that regiment was taken into Continental pay in May 1776, Comstock did not actually receive a Continental commission until September 1776. Comstock became lieutenant colonel of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment in January 1777.