OLIVER ELLSWORTH, CO-SIGNED BY: JOSIAH SPATSING
Oliver Ellsworth signed this document to pay Benjamin Harrison £200 for "carrying on" the Cannon Foundry at Salisbury, Connecticut in 1777.
Manuscript document signed "O Ellsworth" as "Comtee" and, on verso, "Josiah Spatsing". 2 pages, 8¼x6¼, 1 sheet, front and verso with docket on page 2. Hartford, Connecticut, June 6, 1776. Ellsworth signed this document to pay Benjamin Harrison £25.14.11 for 74 pounds of saltpeter (also potassium nitrate), an ingredient of black gunpowder. Ellsworth served on Connecticut's Committee of the Pay Table during the American Revolutionary War and were three of the five men who supervised Connecticut's war expenditures. The Pay-Table's members were rotated. The signatures of three of the members of the Pay-Table were required for an order to pay. Ellsworth (1745-1807, born in Windsor, Connecticut) represented Connecticut in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1784 and was a Judge of the Connecticut Superior Court from 1785 to 1789. A delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he helped broker the "Connecticut Compromise", which broke the impasse between large and small states over representation in Congress. He was one of Connecticut's first two U.S. Senators, serving from 1789 to March 8, 1796, when he resigned, having been appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Washington. While in Congress, he drafted the Judiciary Act of 1789, which organized the federal judiciary system. He retired from the Court in 1799. Irregular edges. Folds and creases (not near signature). Otherwise in fine condition.