To George Washington from Brigadier Generals Nathanael Greene and Lord Stirling, 18 May 1776
From Brigadier Generals Nathanael Greene and Lord Stirling
New York, 18 May 1776. Have investigated the claims of two officers to fill “the Vacant post of a Captain in Colonel Wyllys’s Regiment. Wee find they are both Gentlemen of undoubted Merrit But as to Rank in the Continental Army we can have no doubt remaining that it belongs to Leiutenant Huntington, he having been appointed a first Leiutenant in the Service some months before Leiutenant Champion.”1
DS, in Stirling’s writing, DLC:GW.
1. Ebenezer Huntington was appointed a first lieutenant in the 2d Connecticut Regiment on 8 Sept. 1775. See GW to Joseph Spencer, 26 Sept. 1775. Henry Champion, Jr. (1751–1836), of Colchester became a second lieutenant in the 2d Connecticut Regiment on 1 May 1775. Although the date of his promotion to first lieutenant is uncertain, Champion held that rank in Col. Samuel Wyllys’s 22d Continental Regiment effective 1 Jan. 1776, serving in the company commanded by Capt. Levi Wells, the officer whose promotion to major of the regiment earlier this year created the vacant captaincy. Champion became a captain in Colonel Wyllys’s 3d Connecticut Regiment on 1 Jan. 1777 and served to May 1780. He is often confused with his father Col. Henry Champion, Sr. (1723–1797), who was a deputy commissary general of purchases for the Continental army.