General Orders, 23 July 1778
General Orders
Head-Quarters Wrights Mills [N.Y.] Thursday July 23rd 1778.
Parole Farmington—C. Signs Freehold France.
John Ternant and Robert Forsythe Esquires are appointed Deputy Quarter Masters General and are to be respected and obeyed accordingly.1
At a Division General Court-Martial held at Kakeat Camp July 16th 1778—Coll Gibson President Lieutenant Deavors and Ensign Gassaway of the 3rd Maryland Regiment tried for disobedience of Orders and neglect of duty in absenting themselves from their Regiment without leave, found guilty of a breach of the 2nd Article of 13th section of the Articles of War and the Court considering the evil tendency of such Conduct which has been too generally practiced by the Officers throughout the line & which Lieutt Deavor and Ensign Gassaway have offered in mitigation of their Offence, are unanimously of Opinion they be severely reprimanded in General Orders and beg leave to observe that nothing but a tacit Consent of the Commanding Officer of the Regiment prevents the Court from being much more severe in their sentence.2
It gives the Commander in Chief most sensible Pain to find any Officers Conduct so very blameable as that of Lieutenant Deavor and Ensn Gassaway—The striking Propriety and Necessity of Officers staying in Camp with their Corps is well known to every Private—The General is therefore sorry that he is obliged to reprimand Lieutt Deavor and Ensn Gassaway or that an Example of so pernicious & fatal a tendency should be seen in the records of the Army.3
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
GW’s aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman wrote to Assistant Commissary General of Purchases John Chaloner at Philadelphia on this date, “None of the Stores which I bespoke for his Excellency have yet arrived. We are out of Tea and Sugar and if they are not already sent on, be pleased to send a pound of the former and half a dozen loaves of the latter by the very first conveyance. The other things to follow as quick as possible.” GW signed the cover of that letter (PWacD: Sol Feinstone Collection, on deposit PPAmP).
Col. Jeduthan Baldwin of the artillery artificers recorded in his journal for this date: “I rode with Genl. Washington thro King street, took a View of the sound, & round Camp & dind with him” (, 130).
1. Robert Forsyth (c.1754–1794) of Virginia had been acting as an aide-de-camp for Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene. He left the quartermaster department in early 1779 and became deputy commissary of purchases in Virginia, later serving as commissary of purchases for the southern department. In September 1789 GW appointed Forsyth to be federal marshal for Georgia, where he was killed while serving court papers in January 1794.
2. John Deaver (1758–1813) of Baltimore was commissioned a lieutenant in the 3d Maryland Regiment in December 1776. He resigned his Continental commission in April 1779 and became a captain in the Baltimore militia a month later. Nicholas Gassaway (1757–1806), who enlisted as a sergeant in the 1st Maryland Regiment in December 1776, was appointed an ensign in the 3d Maryland Regiment by 17 April 1777. By 1780 he was serving as a lieutenant with a commission dated from 17 April 1777. In January 1781 he transferred to the 2d Maryland Regiment, and he served to the end of the war. For the cited article of war, see , 5:797.
3. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s orderly book for this date adds: “The Auditor’s office is kept at one Mr Martins a mile in front of General Gates’s Quarters on the right of the Village at White Plains” (MHi: Lincoln Papers; see also orderly book of Jedediah Huntington’s brigade, NHi).