Adam Foutz and the Commander-in-Chief’s Guard

John C. Fitzpatrick erred in writing, back in 1917, that Adam Foutz cooked for Gen. George Washington starting in July 1775, as I described yesterday. But Fitzgerald was correct to say that Foutz was:

• one of the general’s cooks, and
• “a member of the Commander-in-chief’s Guard.”

However, Fitzpatrick’s phrasing left the impression, as amplified by Washington biographer James Thomas Flexner and others, that Foutz stopped being a cook when he was transferred.

Instead, the record of his army service is clear that Foutz became a cook for the commander-in-chief’s guard. He is listed with the rank of private, and also designated as a “cook” and “baking for the army.”

Those documents describing Foutz have been published in the Pennsylvania Archives series under such titles as “A List of men of His Excellency’s Guards draughted from the Regt. of the State of Penn’a.” and muster rolls of the guard produced by its commander, Lt. William Colfax, assuring the unit where Foutz originally enlisted that he was cooking for the general.

That company traveled with Gen. Washington, looking after his headquarters papers and equipment. The guard’s job was to stay close to the commander-in-chief. Therefore, it made sense for its cooks also to serve Washington, especially when he was on campaign.

We also know that Foutz cooked for Washington through the end of the war. One of the last entries in the general’s expense book, dated 10 Nov 1783, is: “To the following hired Servts. at Breaking up Ho.Keeping at Rocky Hill - 6 Mo. Wages each.” Adam Foutz received “30 Drs.…£9,” and below that is another entry “To Adam Foutz…Cook…£5/10/—”

Foutz and three other men signed (or, in one case, marked) a receipt for the commander, now part of his papers at the Library of Congress, which reads:

Reced of His Excellency General Washington—Thirty dollars Each—in full for our extra service in his family

So we even have Adam Foutz’s signature confirming that he worked for Washington’s military household well after the Treaty of Paris. TOMORROW: So who was in the Cambridge kitchen?

The Arrival of Adam Foutz

When Gen. George Washington stayed in what is now Longfellow National Historic Site during the siege of Boston, he kept a running expense account. The steward that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had recommended, Timothy Austin, kept a more detailed record. And some invoices and receipts survive.

But nowhere in that material is the name of Adam Foutz, often identified as one of Washington’s cooks while he was in Cambridge, as I quoted yesterday.

Instead, Adam Foutz shows up first in documents from Pennsylvania, printed in the vast Pennsylvania Archives series. They show that he enlisted in Capt. John Patterson’s company of the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment for the length of the war. One entry says that Foutz arrived on 2 Dec 1776; others imply he enlisted one year later, or perhaps that was when he was transfered. This must be the same guy because documents list him as “cook” and “baking for the army.”

The online Pennsylvania State Archives database shows that the state has several documents related to Foutz’s pay.

Adam Foutz thus came out of Pennsylvania, and joined the Continental Army months after its commander had left Massachusetts. There’s no evidence to link him to the “French Cook” whom Washington paid on 24 July 1775. (Which makes sense really, since Foutz isn’t a common French name.) Alas, there’s also no evidence to identify who that “French Cook” was.

TOMORROW: Adam Foutz and the commander-in-chief’s guard.

Adam Foutz and the General’s “French Cook”

So who was cooking all those robins for Gen. George Washington at his Cambridge headquarters? On 24 July 1775, the commander-in-chief recorded in his expense account that he had paid 2s.5d. “To a French Cook.”

The first scholar to edit this document, John C. Fitzpatrick, identified that cook as “Adam Foutz, later a member of the Commander-in-chief’s Guard.”

That line seems to have caught other authors’ attention. James Thomas Flexner, for example, wrote in the second volume of his Washington biography (later abridged into the volume at the right):

Adam Foutz had the panache of being French, but he soon shifted to guarding headquarters with a musket on his shoulder, we know not whether because he yearned for gunpowder or his sauces did not please.

Burke Davis’s George Washington and the American Revolution echoes that in saying:

The staff included…two cooks, one of whom, the Frenchman Adam Foutz, served briefly in the kitchen before joining Washington’s bodyguard.

Foutz even shows up in Jeff Shaara’s novel Rise to Rebellion, which depicts Washington as sending the man into the ranks because his idea of “worldly cuisine” included “an elaborate dinner whose main attraction was bugs.” No francophobia there!

I’ve been researching Washington’s life in Cambridge in 1775-76, and one small conclusion is that none of that is true. Foutz wasn’t the “French Cook,” he was never at Cambridge, and he never stopped being a cook.

(In addition, Shaara’s novel apparently shows the commander-in-chief still in the Harvard president’s house in October 1775, three months after he had moved to the John Vassall house.)

TOMORROW: The arrival of Adam Foutz.