Rolls and Lists of Connecticut Men in the Revolution

The State of Connecticut issued in 1889 through the Adjutant-General’s office the splendid volume edited by Prof. Henry P. Johnston, entitled “Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution.” Later investigations have brought to light new rolls and additional information not contained in that volume. It is these new rolls which are here printed to serve as a supplement to the volume issued by the State.

The arrangement of the material in this volume follows closely the arrangement adopted in the Record of the Service of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution, and a reference to that work accompanies many of the rolls here printed, showing where the roll would have appeared had it been printed in that volume. In many instances it is difficult to decide whether an organization served as State Troops or as Militia, and later investigation may change the present arrangement of many companies in this respect. It seems probable that some companies now credited to the Militia will prove to have served as State Troops.

This work does not profess to be more than a list of men who served as soldiers, with an account of their service and such further records as will aid in identifying them. Consequently much has been omitted in the printing of these rolls which has appeared irrelevant to the object in view. It has seemed outside the scope of the work to give the amount with which a soldier was charged for his gun, cartouch-box, or blanket, the number of months and days in service when dates of both his enlistment and discharge are given, the total amount disbursed by a captain for the wages and expenses of the men in his company, and numerous similar items. As the location of the manuscript of each roll is given, the curious can find such items as occur by reference to the originals.

In indexing all names have been spelled exactly as they appear in the text, with the following exceptions. Where an abbreviation appeared and there was no reasonable doubt as to the name for which the abbreviation stood, the name has been given in full in the index. The names of a few prominent officers have been indexed under one uniform and recognized spelling rather than to follow the various misspellings found in the text. All place names have been properly spelled in the index regardless of their spelling in the text.

Table of Contents

Lexington Alarm List, page 1
Continental Regiments, 1775, page 9
Continental regiments, 1776, page 27
Connecticut Line, 1777-1781, page 45
Connecticut Line, 1781-1783, page 93
Connecticut Line, 1783, page 139
State Troops, 1775, page 132
State Troops, 1776, page 133
State Troops, 1777, page 145
Militia Regiments, 1776, page 149
Militia Regiments, 1777, page 177
Militia Regiments, 1778, page 183
Militia Regiments, 1779, page 189
Militia Regiments, 1780, page 213
Militia Regiments, 1781, page 215
Militia Regiments, 1782 page 217
Militia Regiments, page 219
Naval Record, page 229
Pensioners page 265
Appendix, page 273
Index, page 281

Digital Manuscript

Complete Introduction

The State of Connecticut issued in 1889 through the Adjutant-General’s office the splendid volume edited by Prof. Henry P. Johnston, entitled “Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution.” Later investigations have brought to light new rolls and additional information not contained in that volume. It is these new rolls which are here printed to serve as a supplement to the volume issued by the State.

This volume of Rolls and Lists is published under the provisions of a recent special Act of the General Assembly making an annual appropriation of one thousand dollars to the Connecticut Historical Society; one of the purposes specifically named in this act being “to publish its rolls of soldiers in the revolutionary and colonial wars, not heretofore printed.” Another provision is that the Society ” shall deposit in the State Library three hundred copies of each catalogue, report, or other work published ” under this act, to be disposed of by the State Librarian. This is the third publication issued under the provisions of this act, and the first important work so issued.

The late Judge Sherman W. Adams, while chairman of the Society’s publication committee, undertook the task of preparing the manuscript copy for this volume for the printer. He placed the Society’s unpublished rolls in his office safe where they would be conveniently at hand for the work, examined and compared them with those already in print, and began the labor of copying. But poor health soon caused him to lay aside the work for many months, only to take it up a second time and be again forced by illness to drop it, this time permanently, and he sadly returned the manuscript to the Society’s vault.

Meanwhile work was progressing, with considerable delays and occasional cessations, upon two other volumes of Collections, the fifth and seventh, which the Society already had in press; and between the issuing of these two another, the sixth volume, was published, the gift of our first Vice-President.

While the last of these three volumes was yet in press another effort was made to prepare the volume of Revolutionary War Rolls for the printer, the Corresponding Secretary and the Librarian of the Society undertaking the work as a special volunteer committee. But the task was greater than either had, perhaps, anticipated, and after a spasmodic effort and the preparation of about one hundred pages of copy the work again came to a standstill.

At the annual meeting last May the Standing Committee of the Society took the matter in hand and instructed the publication committee to take up and carry to completion the publication of the Revolutionary Rolls belonging to the Society, and such others remaining unpublished as could be found. From that time to the present the work has been constantly in progress, the labor falling naturally upon the chairman of the publication committee. He has been fortunate in having the assistance of Edmund C. Thomas of Trinity College, Hartford, in making the copy, and of Miss Alice M. Gay, also of Hartford, in writing the cards for the index. All of the proofs, however, have been read by him, and with a half-dozen exceptions the proof of every roll or list has been read with the original manuscript. The index cards also were all compared by him with the printed sheets before they were printed.

The fact of this volume being in the nature of a supplement to one already in print made its preparation more difficult in some ways than it would otherwise have been; for it became necessary to examine each manuscript roll in order to determine whether it had been printed in the volume already issued by the State, or whether it should be copied for the Society’s volume. A further complication was the frequent finding of rolls the names on which appeared to have been already printed though in a different arrangement. Often a part or all of the names appearing on a manuscript company roll would be found scattered through an alphabetically arranged regimental roll in the printed Record of Connecticut Men in the Revolution. In many such cases it was only after the most careful comparison that a decision as to printing the manuscript could be reached.

Every roll and list here printed is either entirely new, or contains sufficient that is new in the way of new names, additional service, or names of the towns from which the men came to justify its printing. In a work of this character it is difficult to avoid duplicating some of the matter already printed, but it is believed that there is very little of such duplication. It has been thought better to print, with a few exceptions, the whole of each roll or list, even at the risk of occasional duplication, than to attempt to ex-tract and print new names from lists already partially in print. In a few cases a roll has been reprinted entire from another source than the State’s publication, to show variations in spelling. The name of a town from which a man came has in many instances proved an important means of identification, and special attention has been paid to giving the towns wherever they appear on the rolls.

The arrangement of the material in this volume follows closely the arrangement adopted in the Record of the Service of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution, and a reference to that work accompanies many of the rolls here printed, showing where the roll would have appeared had it been printed in that volume. In many instances it is difficult to decide whether an organization served as State Troops or as Militia, and later investigation may change the present arrangement of many companies in this respect. It seems probable that some companies now credited to the Militia will prove to have served as State Troops.

This work does not profess to be more than a list of men who served as soldiers, with an account of their service and such further records as will aid in identifying them. Consequently much has been omitted in the printing of these rolls which has appeared irrelevant to the object in view. It has seemed outside the scope of the work to give the amount with which a soldier was charged for his gun, cartouch-box, or blanket, the number of months and days in service when dates of both his enlistment and discharge are given, the total amount disbursed by a captain for the wages and expenses of the men in his company, and numerous similar items. As the location of the manuscript of each roll is given, the curious can find such items as occur by reference to the originals.

In indexing all names have been spelled exactly as they appear in the text, with the following exceptions. Where an abbreviation appeared and there was no reasonable doubt as to the name for which the abbreviation stood, the name has been given in full in the index. The names of a few prominent officers have been indexed under one uniform and recognized spelling rather than to follow the various misspellings found in the text. All place names have been properly spelled in the index regardless of their spelling in the text.

The rolls here printed from the Society’s archives have been presented to the Society at various times by sundry persons; many of them are from the collection of Trumbull papers received in 1845 from the executor of the estate of William T. Williams, a grandson of the elder Governor Trumbull. The Revolutionary War manuscripts in the State Library which have been examined for this work comprise thirty-seven folio volumes consisting of every description of document relating to the subject mounted upon or between the leaves of the volumes; also documents mounted in one large folio volume which were presented in 1877 by Charles Hebard of Lebanon, great-grandson of Hon. William Williams; also a package of documents purchased in 1893 from Samuel A. Drake of Boston. The manuscripts in the Comptroller’s office include several small unbound or paper-covered books of accounts; the thick folio volume of Haskell’s Receipts; and a large, square, thin volume referred to as “Copy in Comptroller’s Office.” This last mentioned volume was evidently made in recent years and consists of copies of rolls, probably made from original manuscripts. Originals of some of these are found in the State Library, many are already in print in the Record of Connecticut Men in the Revolution, though probably taken from another source, while the others are new material and the location of the originals from which they were copied is unknown. The volume of Haskell’s Receipts is of much interest. It consists of records of accounts preferred by the State of Connecticut against the United States for payments made by the State for the wages and expenses of State Troops and Militia, each of which is certified as correct.

A complete roster of Col. David Waterbury Jr.’s regiment of Connecticut volunteers, 1776, was published in 1897. As the original rolls are in private hands and the pamphlet was issued under the United States copyright law, the material is not included in this volume.

Sufficient material is at hand to form another volume of the size of the present one. This material consists not of rolls but of returns forwarded from the different towns to the Colony and State authorities, giving the names of soldiers serving from each town, and of lists of soldiers prepared by their commanding officers, giving the town from which each soldier came. The Society hopes to publish this material soon and would welcome the knowledge of any other unpublished rolls or lists which might add to the interest of the volumes.

Source

Connecticut Historical Society; Rolls and Lists of Connecticut Men in the Revolution, published as vol. VIII of Connecticut Historical Society Collections; Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1901.

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