Colonel Timothy Pickering to George Washington, 29 June 1781
From Colonel Timothy Pickering
Camp at Peekskill June 29. 1781.
Sir
Major Platt having signified to me his intentions to quit my department, I immediately sought for a suitable character for the office of deputy quarter master to the main army; and after due inquiry, have fixed on lieut. colo. Dearborn.1 He has consented to serve: but being in the line of the army, he cannot be taken from thence without your Excellency’s approbation, which I now solicit. The act of Congress to this point I beg leave to inclose.2
As the regiment to which lieut. colo. Dearborn belongs is small, & has two other field officers, I thought no lieutenant colonel could, on these accounts, with less inconvenience be spared from the line.3 Should my choice meet with your Excellency’s approbation, I request you will be pleased to direct the resignation of Major Platt, & the appointment of lieut. colo. Dearborn, to be announced in the general orders of to-morrow.4 I have the honour to be with the greatest respect your Excellency’s most obedt servant
T. Pickering Q.M.G.
ALS, DLC:GW; LB, DNA: RG 93, Records of Quartermaster General Timothy Pickering, 1780–87.
1. Pickering had written Richard Platt, deputy quartermaster general to the main army, from Newburgh, N.Y., on 24 June to acknowledge Platt’s decision to accept “the place of aid de camp to a general officer” and to assure that “the seperation now to take place, will not I trust be any other than of business; as a late fellow labourer in the same vocation, as an acquaintance & a friend, I shall ever be glad to see you” (MHi: Pickering Papers). Platt became an aide-de-camp to Major General Stirling (see General Orders, 2 July).
Pickering also wrote Lt. Col. Henry Dearborn from Newburgh on 24 June: “After the army gets tolerably well settled in its present encampment, I shall be glad of your assistance. The time during which the army will remain there quiet will give the best opportunity of getting the necessary information of the business of the office you have done me the honour to accept. I shall be down to-morrow or next day, when I shall have the pleasure of seeing you. … Colo. Lutterloh, commissary of forage will deliver you this: I beg leave to introduce him to your acquaintance” (MHi: Pickering Papers).
2. Pickering enclosed an extract from a congressional resolution adopted on 15 July 1780: “That the quarter master have liberty, with the approbation of the commander in chief, or commander of a seperate army, to take such and so many officers from the line of the army, to serve in his department, as he may find necessary, and as are willing to engage in the business” (DLC:GW; see also , 17:624).
3. Dearborn served in the 1st New Hampshire Regiment.
4. See General Orders, 30 June.