BETHEL TOWNSHIP — A unique George Washington letter, dated 1780 and addressed to Col. Stephen Moylan, heads to auction at Briggs Auction’s Fine Estates Auction on Friday, Aug. 23.
Descended in and cherished by the consignor’s family, the letter is now being offered for the first time at public auction. The letter was written on Jan. 5, 1780, after Washington and his troops marched into Morristown, New Jersey, that December for winter encampment.
In it, Washington requests that Stephen Moylan, the colonel of the Fourth Continental Light Dragoons camped in Colchester, Conn., organize commissions to complete an arrangement of the four regimes of cavalry as requested by the board of war. Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, closes with, “I am, dear sir, your humble servant, George Washington.
” The letter reads in full as: “Dear Sir, The Board of War are anxious to complete an arrangement of the four Regimes of Cavalry and have wrote to me on that account. You will therefore be pleased to forward that of your regiment as speedily as possible. As this will be first upon record in the War Office and will be the scale by which the future formations will take place, I must request you to be as particular as possible in ascertaining the status of the commissions and if any officers are entitled to promotions in consequence of vacancies.
You are to specify when the vacancies happened and who formally filled them. The majority of your regiment and that of l.