Memorandum, 17 December 1756
Memorandum
[Fort Loudoun, 17 December 1756]
N.B. A Copy of the above Orders1 was sent to Captains Cocke & Lewis on the Branch.2 Wrote Capt. Vanmeter to procure waggons, &c. and to assist in the removal of the provision & Stores; & to take due care of them.3 Wrote Lt Walter Stewart, to receive those Stores and Provisions, and take care of them.4
LB, DLC:GW.
2. Thomas Cocke, probably of Suffolk County, was made a captain in the Virginia forces in December 1754 shortly after GW had left the regiment. Dinwiddie named him one of the captains in the new Virginia Regiment in September 1755 and he remained a captain of one of its companies until the number of companies was reduced in May 1757. Joshua Lewis was given the rank of lieutenant in the Virginia forces in November 1754 and was also one of those promoted to captain in the new Virginia Regiment in September 1755, where he remained until 1758 when he resigned to return to the British navy.
3. No letter ordering Henry Van Meter, a settler on the South Branch who was acting as commissary for the forces in that area, to aid Thomas Cocke and Joshua Lewis in taking their stores to Thomas Waggener’s fort has been found, nor has a letter to Walter Steuart instructing him to receive and care for these stores at Waggener’s fort been found. See GW to Dinwiddie, 19 Dec. 1756.
4. GW promoted Walter Steuart from ensign to lieutenant in September 1755 and subsequently assigned him to Thomas Waggener’s company. After being promoted to captain in the summer of 1758 and being wounded near Fort Duquesne in September of that year, he went as a volunteer in the British army. He shortly secured an ensigncy in the 17th Regiment of Foot and in 1760 a lieutenant’s commission in the Royal Welsh Volunteers (94th Regiment of Foot), going on half pay in 1763.