John Goddard: “constant in service of the Province”

Back in April, I quoted from the diary of John Goddard (1730-1816) of Brookline, recording how he carted military supplies out to Concord for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee on Supplies just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

Goddard’s work for the army continued after that break, as preserved in the same notebook:

April 22nd 1775—to supping and Breakfasting twelve Men and four oxen. £0:7:4

24. to dining 4 Men
to entertaining teames and men that brought Canteens 0:2:0

May 2d, 1775.
Delivered to the Commasary at the Store in Camebridge
Sixteen Bushels of potatoes £1:8.9 [etc. etc.]

May 2 for Entertainment for Carter with ordinance stores 0:1:0

May 22. Began to be constant in service of the Province Myself.

June 2, 1775. to load of flour and porke from Watertown 0:7:0
2 to Carting Catrage paper from Brookline to Watertown 0:4:0

June 3 to Carting load canteens to Camebridge 0:6:0

June 5. for going to Camebridge with team for ammunition 0:5.0

June 27. 1775. to one days work of two hands and teams Drawing tree to the brestwork 0-14-0

July 7, 1775. To hand and team carting stons to the well in the fort at Brookline 0-6-0

1775. Octr. 3. To a days work carting together Bombs & Balls for Colo. [William] Burbeck To 1/2 day’s work removing Powder from my own house to ye Magazine in Jamaica Plain.

Burbeck was the second-in-command of the artillery regiment.

A different partial transcription appears in Nathaniel Goddard: A Boston Merchant, 1767-1853 (1906), by Henry G. Pickering. It includes “July 19, 1775. To cart and tent poles and Baggage [“Also gabeons”] for Colonel [Timothy] Danielson’s Rigement 0..14..0”.

On August 9, Gen. George Washington’s orders included: “Mr. John Goddard is appointed by the Commander-in-Chief, Wagon-Master General to the Army of the twelve United Colonies, and is to be obeyed as such.”