PAY ORDER FOR CONNECTICUT SOLDIER RETURNED HOME AFTER "CRUEL IMPRISONMENT" ALONGSIDE ETHAN ALLEN

Autograph pay order signed by Thomas Seymour as head of the Connecticut Committee of the Pay-Table. [Hartford, Connecticut], 7 February 1777. 1p, X x X in. Seymour requests that Treasurer John Lawrence issue payment to soldier Charles Steward who was taken prisoner with Col. Ethan Allen in 1775 during a failed attempt to capture Montreal. Docketed to verso "No 6243 / Order Charles Steward / Dated 7th Febry 1777 / £42.6.6 / audited 11th Sept 1777" and signed on verso by [Colonel] Charles Webb acknowledging receipt of the funds to be dispensed to Steward.

Document reads in part: "Sir, Pay to Charles Steward a Soldier taken with Col. Allen & now returned home from a Cruel Imprisonment the Sum of Forty two pounds Six Shillings & Six pence in Bills for his wages & Losses of Cloathing..."

By September 1775, Ethan Allen was already a well-established military figure due to the exploits of his Green Mountain Boys and the May 1775 capture of Fort Ticonderoga. Serving under Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, Allen set out for Quebec in early September 1775 as a civilian scout to recruit support from local inhabitants and Native Americans for a planned attack on Montreal. At the Battle of Longue-Pointe on September 25, Allen and 30 of his men were captured. Among the American contingent captured was Corporal Charles Stewart (1733-1796), 4th Connecticut Regiment (compiled Rev. War service records record his name as Stewart, Steward, and Stuart). The 4th Connecticut was raised just over a week after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and saw action in the Invasion of Canada following its adoption into the Continental Army in June 1775. The exact length of Stewart's imprisonment is unclear, and at least one source suggests he was sent to Halifax where he was confined for a period of months, and ultimately exchanged. The date of this order indicates he was freed by at least February 1777 - well over a year before Col. Ethan Allen. By November 1777 records indicate that Stewart had certainly returned to active duty with the 2nd Regiment, Connecticut Line, under the command of Col. Charles Webb. 

Thomas Seymour's reference to Stewart and Allen's "Cruel Imprisonment" is consistent with the descriptions of captivity as given by Allen in his memoir, A Narrative of Col. Ethan Allen's Captivity (1779), and other Revolutionary War sources. Conditions faced by Allen, and no doubt by Stewart, were incredibly harsh. Prisons were notoriously filthy, crowded, and treatment was often poor. Rather than using a fixed camp at the start of the American Revolution, the British primarily used prison hulks to detain captured Americans. Allen faced solitary confinement, prison ships, brutal voyages to England and back, and additional confinement in New York. 

Documents associated with Ethan Allen's failed 1775 mission to capture Montreal and his imprisonment are exceedingly scarce. 

[Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs] [American Revolutionary War, American Revolution, Founding Fathers, Declaration of Independence, Colonial America, George Washiington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe]