“Sentenced to be Sent to Simsburty in Connecticut”

Here’s another glimpse of Gen. George Washington’s work in Cambridge 250 years ago.

On 11 Dec 1775, mustermaster general Stephen Moylan wrote out a letter to the committee of safety of Simsbury, Connecticut, for the commander’s signature:

Gentlemen

the prisoners which will be deliverd you with this haveing been tried by a Court Martial & deemd to be Such flagrant & Attrocious villains, that they Cannot by any Means be Set at Large or Confined in any place near this Camp were Sentenced to be Sent to Simsburty in Connecticut.

you will therefore be pleas’d to have them Secured in your Jail or in such other manner as to you shall Seem necessary So that they Cannot possibly make their escape—the Charges of their imprisonment will be at the Continental expence.

That same day Washington’s new military secretary Robert Hanson Harrison (shown here) sent this note to Gen. Artemas Ward in Roxbury, as published by Peter Force in American Archives:

I am commanded by his Excellency to enclose to your care the letter which you will herewith receive for the Committee at Symsbury. Should there be any of the Connecticut troops at Roxbury, which are going that way, and with whom the prisoners can be trusted, you will get them to take charge of them, as it will save some expense; but if you are of opinion that there will be the least risk of their getting away, you will send them off under a proper guard, with a copy of their sentence for the Committee.

On 21 December, Harrison sent a follow-up:

I wrote you the 11th inst., respecting the prisoners to be sent to Simsbury, and enclosed a letter for the Committee of that place; to these I beg leave to refer you. In case you did not receive them, his Excellency desires that you will send them off under a proper guard, unless there should be any of the Connecticut troops going home, who will take the charge of them to the Committee. You will please certify the Committee of the atrociousness of their crime, and of the court’s sentence.

Some of the Connecticut regiments had finished their enlistment terms on 10 December and were heading home. Hence the suggestion that those men could escort these prisoners to Simsbury (and presumably get a little more pay for that work).

Because Washington’s letter was printed in American Archives, a widely distributed and authoritative nineteenth-century source, it’s been quoted in many books about the Old New Gate Prison at Simsbury and American incarceration in general. 

However, I haven’t found any of those books stating who these prisoners were. Because Loyalists were confined at Simsbury later in the war, many authors have assumed that the people Washington sent to Connecticut were political prisoners. 

TOMORROW: Naming names.