Continental Loan Office Certificate Signed by Maryland Treasurer Thomas Harwood for a Loan by Future Continental Congressman Jeremiah Townley Chase, Annapolis, 1778

Partly printed document completed in manuscript and signed by Thomas Harwood (1753-1804), as Continental Loan Officer. Annapolis, Maryland, 13 August 1878. 1 page, approx. 6 1/4 x 6 3/4 in. Docketed to verso. 

A Continental Loan Office document, numbered 453, acknowledging receipt of $266 2/3 from Jeremiah Townley Chase, to be repaid on 13 August 1791, three years from the date of the document. In the lower margin, the interest was calculated as of 17 July 1781. The document features attractive printer’s devices.

The lender, Jeremiah Townley Chase (1748–1828), was a prominent Maryland lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as a delegate for Maryland in the Continental Congress in 1783 and 1784. He later served as chief justice of Maryland’s Court of Appeals from 1806 until 1824.

Before the war, Chase was elected to the Colonial House of Delegates and joined the pre-revolutionary Maryland Committee of Correspondence for Baltimore. He was later elected to the revolutionary Annapolis Convention and, in 1776, attended Maryland’s Constitutional Convention representing Anne Arundel County.

Here, Chase loaned $266 2/3 to the State of Maryland through the Continental Loan Offices, part of a financing system introduced by Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris to generate funds for the war effort during the American Revolution.

Thomas Harwood (1743–1804) came from a large and prosperous Anne Arundel County family and was an Annapolis merchant prior to the Revolutionary War. In 1775 he was appointed Treasurer of the Western Shore, a position he held until his death. He also served as commissioner of the Continental Loan Office in Maryland from 1777 until at least 1781 and acted as an agent for the Maryland Line in the Continental Army.

In addition to his important fiduciary role for the emerging United States, Harwood also served in a military capacity. In 1776 he was commissioned as a First Lieutenant in Captain John Day Scott’s Seventh Company of the First Maryland Regiment, where he helped train inexperienced recruits.

Harwood saw action at the Battle of Long Island on 27 August 1776, and during the retreat reportedly fought off a British ambush with “more than Roman Courage.” That autumn his unit engaged in a series of unsuccessful skirmishes with British forces in New York. At the Battle of White Plains, Harwood assumed command of the company after Captain Scott was mortally wounded. He was subsequently promoted to captain of the Seventh Regiment and was stationed at Morristown, New Jersey, during the winter of 1777, before resigning that summer.

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