The Carlisle Committee of Correspondence to the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, 26 January 1776: résumé
The Carlisle Committee of Correspondence to the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety
Text printed in Samuel Hazard et al., eds., Pennsylvania Archives (1st series; 12 vols., Philadelphia and Harrisburg, 1852–56), IV, 706.
<Carlisle, January 26, 1776: We have received your request of the 11th to send people to Philadelphia to learn the method used at the saltpetre works there and communicate it on their return. We recommend Jonathan Kearsley, who already has some knowledge of the process; he is willing, and will be able both to manufacture and to instruct others.6 In response to your letter of the 12th we have appointed Robert Miller to receive the saltpetre manufactured in the county.7 Addressed to Franklin as president of the committee of safety and signed by William Irvine, Ephraim Blaine, John Byers, and John Montgomery.8>
6. Kearsley (1718–82) came from Scotland and was a druggist in Carlisle: [Elmer L. White,] The Descendants of Jonathan Kearsley. . . (n. p., 1900), pp. [3]-6. He reported to the committee of safety in March that he was making no headway in the manufacture: I Pa. Arch., IV, 727–8.
7. Miller was a signer of the Cumberland Co. committee’s letter above, Dec. 29.
8. Irvine was later captured at Trois Rivières; see Wayne to BF below, June 13, 1776. For Ephraim Blaine see Smith, Letters, III, 673 n., and for John Montgomery PMHB, LXXIV (1950), 451 n., and above, XII, 94 n. All three were Irish by birth. Byers, like Miller, was a signer of the Cumberland Co. committee’s letter above, Dec. 29.