To George Washington from William Brown, 29 May 1780
From William Brown
Baskenridge [N.J.] May 29th 1780
Sir
I beg leave to send enclosed the general return of the Sick and Wounded in the hospitals for the month of April1—it should have been made earlier, but that I was in hopes by waiting a week after my arrival in Camp from Virginia, I should be able to collect a larger number of the returns from the more distant hospitals, so as to render the general return more complete.2
While in Virginia I had the honour of your Excellency’s orders respecting the Sick at Petersburg; and, in order to make the necessary enquiries respecting them, & arrangements for their releif, immediately waited on General Muhlenberg at Fredericksburg3—The troops & Sick at that post had both sufferred considerably the preceding winter—they had lived in tents pitched in an open field during the whole of that severe season, & were not very well furnished with cloathing—the troops however were now gone, and there remained by what accounts the General had received, about twenty or thirty Sick, whose situation was none of the best in other respects, as well as thro’ the natural unhealthiness of the place—Upon the whole, we concluded it would be best to have them immediately moved to Rocky-ridge, a healthy situation, capable of affording good accommodation, & opposite to Richmond, which also the General had determined to make his principal place of rendevous on the communication to the Southward4—to effect this, Col. Davis (as your Excellency advised) was sent down as Superintendant of the Sick; and I wrote to Dr William Rickman, who holds a Commission of some kind or other for providing hospitals and taking care of the Sick &c. of the Continental Army in Virginia, tho’, I beleive, independent of the General Hospital establishment made for the army at large; in which letter, in conformity to your Excellency’s intentions, & cloathed with General Muhlenberg’s immediate authority, I advised him to keep up one general hospital at Rocky-ridge only, & that well provided, for the reception of all the Continental Sick in Virginia that could conveniently be conveyed to it, either from parties on the march or otherwise, and where of necessity any Sick must be left on the road to trust them to the care of private persons with proper certificates from the Officers leaving them there for the payment of reasonable charges on their account. This mode I recommended as more regular & likely to answer the end intended, than the enormously expensive one heretofore used of establishing hospitals at almost every trifling post in the State, with all the apparatus of officers attendants, &c. & even houses occupied, & kept empty, where perhaps there would not be occasion to receive a single Patient in the course of a year.5
I did not stay in Virginia long enough to see whether Dr Rickman would adopt the method I proposed, or deviate from the one before in use, but tis probable he may; and if so the Sick will probably be taken care of, & much expence saved, for the stationary officers above described, with nothing to do, have considered themselves as Sinecures to all intents & purposes; while they have enjoyed every emolument of office & been furnished at their own homes with much more certain and regular supplies of forage & rations than any officer doing duty in or about Camp. I have the honour to be, with the highest respect Your Excellency’s most obedt hble Servant
W. Brown
ALS, DLC:GW. GW’s aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman wrote on the docket: “to be submitted to Committee of Arrangement.”
1. The return has not been identified.
2. Brown had gone to Virginia in April while on furlough. He was in Philadelphia on 20 May “in his way to Headquart[er]s” (Samuel Holten to Nathaniel Peabody, that date, in , 15:159–60).
3. GW had ordered Brown on 22 April to inquire into the hospital at Petersburg, Va., and a potential new hospital site.
Brown wrote New Hampshire delegate and Committee at Headquarters member Nathaniel Peabody from Basking Ridge, N.J., on 30 May about his meeting with Brig. Gen. Peter Muhlenberg: “I found there had been some ground for the information his Excellency [GW] had received—that at present there were but few Sick at Petersburg, and still fewer at any other post in the State, where nevertheless there were at different places, several setts of officers, & all the parade & expence of military hospitals kept up, without any Patients, (or scarcely any) to attend, there being no source to receive them from, but the accidental falling sick of a new recruit now & then in the neighbourhood, or from marching Parties passing by the respective posts—it was evident, this was a very expensive mode of providing for the few Sick that possibly do fall in at those posts.” Brown complained that some “Surgeons not even residing at the Posts where they were employed to serve” enjoyed “all the emoluments of public officers on duty.” Brown “advised that one hospital only should be supported in Virginia which, with General Muhlenberg’s approbation, it was determined should be opened at Rocky-ridge.” Brown also reported that Muhlenberg had dispatched Col. William Davies to superintend the removal of the sick from Petersburg to Rocky Ridge, Va. (DNA:PCC, item 78).
4. For the proposal of Rocky Ridge as an assembly point for recruits and its eventual rejection as too unsanitary and too close to Richmond, see Muhlenberg to GW, 8 May, and n.5 to that document.
5. Brown’s letter to William Rickman, director and chief physician of the hospital in Virginia, has not been identified.