LB, DLC:GW.

John King and John Hall were two of the young lieutenants named to the Virginia Regiment on 3 Sept. 1755. Both were ordered to rendezvous in Fredericksburg. GW immediately assigned Hall to Carter Henry Harrison’s company (which became the company of his brother Henry Harrison in Dec. 1755) and in January indicated that King had been attached to Joshua Lewis’s company. At a court-martial held at Fort Cumberland, Md., on 5 July 1756, his fellow officers found Lieutenant King “guilty of Disobedience of Orders” but “in consideration of his inexperience” excused his offense, and he remained in the regiment until as late as the fall of 1758. By that time, King’s fellow officer Lt. John Hall had already become a regular officer in a British regiment. In May 1757, instead of going to South Carolina as Dinwiddie intended, Hall set out for New York. There, with letters from GW and others, he persuaded Lord Loudoun to allow him to purchase an ensign’s commission in the 44th Regiment of Foot. Back in Virginia 9 months later, he wrote GW that Thomas Gage had made him a lieutenant in his new regiment of light infantry. Gage’s regiment, the 80th, was disbanded in 1764, and in April 1766 Hall became a lieutenant in the 31st Regiment of Foot. This regiment for the most part remained in America until the Revolution; in 1776 it was sent from the West Indies to Quebec.