Receipt to Philip Van Cortlandt, [5 July 1787]
Receipt to Philip Van Cortlandt1
[New York, July 5, 1787. “Received of Phil. Van Cortlandt, Treasurer to the Society of the Cincinnati for the State of New York, Five thousand Dollars in Certificates Issued by John Pierce,2 commonly called New York finals, being part of the Funds belonging to Said Society, and for which we are to be accountable.”3 Receipt not found.]
Dossier File, Van Cortlandt-Van Wyck Papers, MS Division, New York Public Library.
1. Van Cortlandt, who during the American Revolution was a colonel in the Second New York Regiment and a member of George Washington’s staff for a brief period, was brevetted a brigadier general in 1783. In 1788 he was a delegate to the New York Ratifying Convention.
H was a member of the New York State Society of the Cincinnati and had been appointed by the state society as chairman of a committee of correspondence. See “Circular Letter to the State Societies of the Cincinnati,” November 1, 1786 (, III, 693–96). He had attended the general meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati in Philadelphia in May, 1787. See “Credentials as Delegate to the General Society of the Cincinnati,” May 18, 1787 (, IV, 158).
2. Pierce was commissioner of Army accounts.
3. This document, which is Item No. 1 on a handwritten list of calendars of documents, is described: “Society of the Cincinnati. Rev. Officers & Legal Items. Document Signed by Alexr Hamilton, M[arinus] Willett, John Lamb Rich C Platt and D[avid] Brooks. Written by one of the signers.”