From George Washington to Lieutenant Colonel Edward Antill, 8 January 1777
To Lieutenant Colonel Edward Antill
Head Quarters Morris Town 8th Jany 1777
Sir
I recd yours of the 2d Inst. from Baltimore. In Answer to which I have only to desire you to call upon all your Officers who are upon recruiting Service, to exert themselves as much as possible in filling their Companies, and sending their Recruits forward to some general place of Rendezvous that they may be armed equipped and got into service with as much Expedition as possible. As you and Colo. Hazen had the Nomination of your own Officers by Virtue of your Commissions, I shall have no objection to any Gentlemen of good Character that you may think fit to appoint. I would only mention to you that Mr Burwell has already got a Company in the Virginia Artillery, and therefore you had better fill up the place you intended for him with some other Person.1 If going to Virginia yourself will be of any service I certainly shall have no Objection to it. I am &ca.
Df, in Tench Tilghman’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. Antill’s letter to GW of 2 Jan. concerns the recruiting efforts of Congress’s Own Regiment and reads in part: “As Soon as the Congress was made acquainted with the unhappy Stroke we receiv’d before the Walls of Quebec about this time twelve Months it was thought it would be for the benefit of the Service in that Department to have an aditional Regiment of Canadians raised in that Province . . . I have in Consequence Issued recruiting Orders to ten Captains . . . I would Issue order to three More and Messrs Mathew Smith, Nataniel Burwell & Joseph Scott all of the first Virginia Regt are recomended to Companies in Our Regt but I Shall Wait your Excellencys Concurrence & approbation for those three or any other three you Shall think proper to Nominate & Send to me. Mr John Taylor of Virginia has also been strongly recomended for one of the Majoritys. I have wrote him & Coll Woodford on the Subject but have not yet receivd an Answer in that appointment also Sir I Should be happy in your approbation—I am now on my way through the country among the Recruiting Parties to hasten them to the Compleation of their Several Companies I Shall be at Lancaster in four or five days and ten or twelve at Willmington near N. Castle where I Shall be glad to receive your Excellencys Comands” (DLC:GW). Nathaniel Burwell (1750–1802), who apparently joined the 1st Virginia Regiment as an ensign in September 1775, received a captaincy in the 1st Continental Artillery on 30 Nov. 1776. In May 1779 Burwell was appointed an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Robert Howe with the rank of major (see General Orders, 19 May 1779, in DLC:GW), and on 1 Jan. 1783 he retired from the Continental service.