Captain Paul Brigham to George Washington, 1 February 1781
From Captain Paul Brigham
February 1st 1781
May it please your Excellency
Sensible that applications of this kind must be very disagreable to your Excellency—therefore it is with the more reluctence I attempt it—nothing but the want of Health at this period of the grand struggle would induce me to Request Your Excellencys Leave to resign my Commission in the Continantal Army.
The want of Health being my present situation and has been for a Long time—therefore pray Your Excellency would grant my request—and altho: the want of Health forbids my further service in the Field yet I please my self with the prospect of further services as a Citizen.1
And have only to add my warmest wishes that his Excellency may have the satisfaction very soon to see all his exertions and fatigues amply rewarded in a happy and Honourable Peace is the sincere Desire of your Excellencys most Obedt Humble Servant
Paul Brigham
ALS, DNA: RG 93, War Department.
Paul Brigham (1746-1824) of Coventry, Conn., served as a militia officer in 1776. He was commissioned a captain in the 8th Connecticut Regiment in January 1777. As a result of the reorganization of the army, he transferred to the 5th Connecticut Regiment in January 1781, and served as a captain until he left the army in April of the same year. Brigham and his family moved to Norwich, Vt., in 1782. Brigham held public office in Vermont for much of his life; he served in the state legislature and on the Council for a number of years. In October 1796, he was elected as lieutenant governor of Vermont, an office he held until 1813 and again from 1815 to 1820.
In a sworn statement made in Orange County, Vt., on 23 Oct. 1819, Brigham declared that he had participated in the “Battle of Germantown; That he was in fort Mifflin on Mud Island the last five days of the investment of that place by the British, and was one of the last men who left the place when it was evacuated by the Garrison; That he was also in the Battle of Monmouth &c.; That he has always been an inhabitant of the United States; That he is past labour, his strength is gone & worn out & that he stands in need of the aid of his country to support the little remnant of life which remains” (DNA: RG 15, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900).
A death notice printed in the New-Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette (Concord) for 12 July 1824 highlighted Brigham’s years of public service as Revolutionary War officer, lieutenant governor, “High Sheriff of Windsor county,” and as “Chief Judge of the County Court.” The obituary continued: “In all these offices he sustained the reputation of discharging their several duties to the satisfaction of his fellow citizens.”
1. No reply from GW to Brigham has been found.
On the verso of Brigham’s commission, GW’s aide-de-camp David Humphreys wrote a statement dated 22 April 1781 at New Windsor: “I do hereby Certify that Captain Paul Brigham, hath, at his own request, obtained permission from the Commander in Chief, to resign his Commission in the service of the United States” (DNA: RG 15, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900).
Isaac Sherman, lieutenant colonel commandant of the 5th Connecticut Regiment, wrote Brigham from New Milford, Conn., on 30 April 1781: “The improbability of your being transfered to the corps of invalids, there being many difficulties in the way arising from Officers being transfer’d whom the commander in chief thinks was not entitled to it, as they were capable of field duty induced me to send in your resignation—which the commander in chief has been pleased to accept of. I am sorry that the state of your health is such, as to make it necessary that so good an Officer ⟨Should⟩ to retire. I wish you every happiness in your return to civil life, and hope you will not (as many others have done) lose your attachment to the military, and those employed in that service” (DNA: RG 15, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900).
Service record summaries document Brigham’s health status. They record that Brigham was ill in the fall of 1780 and list him as “Sick absent” for November and December of that year. One record indicates that Brigham was “sick at Coventry” in February 1781 (DNA: RG 93, Compiled Service Records of Soldiers who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War).