From George Washington to Andrew Lewis, 8 October 1755
To Andrew Lewis
[Fredericksburg, 8 October 1755]
To Major Andrew Lewis, of the Virginia Regiment.
You are to March all the Recruits, now Rendezvousing in Fredericksburgh, under the conduct of the following Officers:1 viz.
Captain Henry Woodward, Captain Charles Lewis; Lieutenants John Edward Lomax, and Peter Steenbergen;2 Ensigns Hubbard and George Weedon, to Winchester immediately; using the utmost [ ] Dispatch in your March. You are to leave Orders with Captain Spotswood, to Recruit hereabouts, and to Receive the Recruits which may be sent to Rendezvous here; and that whenever he can collect about twenty men, he is to send a Subaltern or a trusty Sergeant, with them to Winchester.
You are to collect all the ammunition that can be had here, or what you think a sufficient Quantity, and take it up to Winchester with you.
As you will have Officers, more than sufficient for the command with you: You are to send one off every morning to engage Provisions for the men where you intend to Quarter that night; or to use other methods in that respect, as you may think most Expedient. Given under my hand, this 8th of October, 1755.
G:W.
LB, DLC:GW.
1. See GW’s Orders, 6 Oct. 1755, particularly notes 1 and 2.
2. Peter Steenbergen, whom GW made a lieutenant in Charles Lewis’s company of the Virginia Regiment in Sept. 1755, went on to Fort Cumberland, Md., at this time and then in 1757 to the western Virginia frontier. Dinwiddie chose him in 1757 to be one of the officers of a detachment from the regiment to go to South Carolina, but he reported to GW on 1 June that Steenbergen, “afraid of being arested,” did not come down in May to take the ship bound for Charleston. A year later GW recalled Steenbergen to Winchester from Fort George to answer charges of misconduct. GW was told that Steenbergen had been cheating his soldiers “by setting up goods at a high Price and Compelling the soilders to shoot for them, which sum chances amounted to five shillings” (Thomas Waggener to GW, 20 May 1758); but GW concluded that Steenbergen’s offenses “were not sufficient to break him” and allowed him to resign from the regiment (GW to John Blair, 28 May 1758). In the 1760s Peter Steenbergen lived in frontier Hampshire County.