To George Washington from Alexander Scammell, 10 July 1775
From Alexander Scammell
[c.10 July 1775]
General Folsom1 begs leave to lay before your Excellency a Memorandum of what is immediately wanted at Winter Hill. Viz. three Teems, 20 Wheelbarrows. two Thousand Tenpenny Nails Four, Inch Augres. A Gouge, and four Chizzles.
Alxdr Scammell Brigde Major.
ALS, MHi: Norcross Papers. At the end of this document GW wrote “The Committee, or Commissary of supplies is desired to furnish the above things immediately if to be got. July 10th 1775. Go: Washington.”
Alexander Scammell (1747–1781), a native of Massachusetts who moved to New Hampshire about 1772, was protégé of John Sullivan, under whom he studied law during the years immediately preceding the Revolution. On 30 June 1775 Scammell was commissioned brigade major for the New Hampshire forces at Winter Hill, and when GW reorganized the Continental army a short time later, he was continued as Sullivan’s brigade major (General Orders, 15 Aug. 1775). During the New York campaign of 1776, Scammell served Sullivan as an aide-de-camp, and in December 1776 he was appointed colonel of the 3d New Hampshire Regiment. On 5 Jan. 1778 Congress made him adjutant general of the Continental army, a position that he held for two years. Scammell became commander of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment early in 1781 and was mortally wounded later that year at the siege of Yorktown.
1. Nathaniel Folsom (1726–1790) of Exeter, N.H., was elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and in April 1775 the New Hampshire provincial congress gave him the command of all the colony’s troops sent to the American army outside Boston. Folsom was commissioned a major general in the New Hampshire service on 30 June, but receiving no Continental rank, he retired from the army before the end of July. He returned to New Hampshire, and on 24 Aug. he was named general officer of the colony’s militia. Folsom served in Congress from 1777 to 1778 and from 1779 to 1780 and was a member of the camp committee that conferred with GW in the winter of 1778.