Pay Order Issued to Benjamin Huntington and Signed by him and Andrew Kingsbury and John Porter - Connecticut Revolutionary War Bonds

State of Connecticut Pay Order issued to Benjamin Huntington and signed by him on back. Also signed by Andrew Kingsbury and John Porter on front. Further research necessary on John Porter.

Benjamin Huntington (1736-1800) was an American lawyer, jurist and politician from Norwich, Connecticut. He served in the Revolutionary War with the rank of General. He later served Connecticut as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the First United States Congress.

Benjamin was born on April 19, 1736 at Norwich, Connecticut, the only child of Daniel Huntington and his second wife Rachel Wolcott. He married Anne Huntington, of Windham, Connecticut, on May 5, 1765. She died on October 6, 1790 at Norwich. He graduated from Yale in 1761, and soon after, he entered upon the practice of law in his native town, and rose rapidly to the front rank of his profession. He seems to have been unusually devoted to his profession, being at once a severe student, and an active and successful advocate and business man. Though rather shunning than courting public life, he was not allowed to excuse himself from its claims; nor, when called to meet them, did he shrink either from public duties or dangers. In 1775 he was appointed, by the legislature of his native State, on the committee of safety, appointed to advise with the Governor of the State during the recess of the legislature. Only the ablest men and truest patriots of that trying day, would have been put upon that important committee. Again, in 1778, on the recommendation of George Washington, he was appointed by the legislature, one of the delegates to the convention to be held in New Haven, for the regulation of the army. From 1780 to 1784, and again in 1787 and 1788, he was a member of the Continental Congress; and when the new government went into operation, in 1789, he was chosen to represent Connecticut in the First Congress of the United States.

From 1781 to 1790, and also from 1791 to 1793 he was also a member of the upper house of the Connecticut Legislature. On the incorporation of Norwich, Connecticut, in 1784, he was chosen, for an indefinite period, its first Mayor, in which office he served until his formal resignation, in 1796. He was also appointed in 1793, a judge of the superior court of Connecticut, holding this office until 1798. Thus, for more than twenty years, during the most eventful period of United States history, he was continually serving his constituents in offices always onerous, and often hazardous. How well he discharged these trusts, their own recurrence will unequivocally evince. A word on this point, however, is due both to his memory and to the truth of American revolutionary history.

Andrew Kingsbury was born 24 April 1759 at the West Farms. He was the son of Phebe French Kingsbury and Ephraim Kingsbury. He enlisted as a private soldier in June 1776, and was discharged with the Regiment in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, later that year. Kingsbury reentered the service at Danbury, Connecticut, in 1777; he was transferred to the General and Hospital Department, where he served as clerk until 15 December 1778, when he was appointed as Storekeeper. He remained in that position until 1781, when he became clerk in the office of Ralph Pomeroy, Esq., Deputy Quartermaster-General. Kingsbury married Mary Osborn (d. 1848) on 14 January 1783; they had five children. Kingsbury served in the Comptroller’s Office until 1791. He was appointed Comptroller of Public Accounts, serving until 1793, when he was elected Treasurer of the State of Connecticut; Kingsbury remained in that office until 1818. He became Treasurer of the Connecticut Missionary Society in 1799, and Treasurer of Hartford Grammar School in 1806. Andrew Kingsbury died 6 October 1837 in Hartford, Connecticut. (Connecticut Historical Society).

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the Revolutionary War and the American War of Independence, was initiated by delegates from the thirteen American colonies in Congress against Great Britain over their objection to Parliament's taxation policies and lack of colonial representation. From their founding in the 1600s, the colonies were largely left to govern themselves. The cost of victory in the 1754 to 1763 French and Indian War and the 1756 to 1763 Seven Years' War left the British government deeply in debt; attempts to have the colonies pay for their own defense were vigorously resisted. The Stamp Act and Townshend Acts provoked colonial opposition and unrest, leading to the 1770 Boston Massacre and 1773 Boston Tea Party. When Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts upon Massachusetts, twelve colonies sent delegates to the First Continental Congress to draft a Petition to the King and organize a boycott of British goods.

Fighting broke out on 19 April 1775: the British garrison at Boston was harassed by Massachusetts militia at Lexington and Concord after destroying colonial Assembly powder stores. In June the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington to create a Continental Army and oversee the capture of Boston. The Patriots sent their Olive Branch Petition to the King and Parliament, both of whom rebuffed it. In response they invaded British Quebec but were repulsed. In July 1776, Congress unanimously passed the Declaration of Independence. Hopes of a quick settlement were supported by American sympathizers within Parliament who opposed Lord North's "coercion policy" in the colonies. However, after the British were driven out of Boston the new British commander-in-chief, General Sir William Howe, launched a counter-offensive and captured New York City. After crossing the Delaware Washington engaged and routed Hessian forces at the Battle of Trenton and the British at the Battle of Princeton. After British General Burgoyne surrendered at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777, Howe's 1777–1778 Philadelphia campaign captured that city. Washington retreated to Valley Forge during the winter of 1777–1778 where Prussian allied General von Steuben drilled the largely untrained Continental Army into an organized fighting unit.

French Foreign Minister Vergennes saw the war as a way to create an America economically and militarily dependent on France, not Britain. Although talks on a formal alliance began in late 1776, they proceeded slowly until Patriot victory at Saratoga in October 1777. Fears Congress might come to an early settlement with Britain resulted in France and the United States signing two treaties in February 1778. The first was a commercial treaty, the second a Treaty of Alliance; in return for a French guarantee of American independence, Congress agreed to join the war against Britain and defend the French West Indies. Although Spain refused to join the Franco-American alliance, in the 1779 Treaty of Aranjuez they agreed to support France in its global war with Britain, hoping to regain losses incurred in 1713.

In other fronts in North America, Governor of Spanish Louisiana Bernardo Gálvez routed British forces from Louisiana. The Spanish, along with American privateers supplied the 1779 American conquest of Western Quebec (later the US Northwest Territory). Gálvez then expelled British forces from Mobile during the Battle of Fort Charlotte and the Siege of Pensacola, cutting off British military aid to their American Indian allies in the interior southeast. Howe's replacement, General Sir Henry Clinton, then mounted a 1778 "Southern strategy" from Charleston. After capturing Savannah, defeats at the Battle of Kings Mountain and the Battle of Cowpens forced Cornwallis to retreat to Yorktown, where his army was besieged by an allied French and American force. An attempt to resupply the garrison was repulsed by the French navy at the Battle of the Chesapeake, and Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781.

Although their war with France and Spain continued for another two years, Yorktown ended the British will to continue the war in North America. The North Ministry was replaced by Lord Rockingham, who accepted office on the basis George III agreed to American independence. Preliminary articles were signed in November 1782, and in April 1783 Congress accepted British terms; these included independence, evacuation of British troops, cession of territory up to the Mississippi River and navigation to the sea, as well as fishing rights in Newfoundland. On September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed between Great Britain and the United States, then ratified the following spring.

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