To George Washington from Colonel William Shepard, 26 May 1780
From Colonel William Shepard
Highlands [N.Y.] may 26 1780
Sir
I would inform your Excellency that the Revd Wm Van Horn—Chaplin to General Glovers Brigade on the account of his Domestic Affairs is Very Desierous of a Discharge from the army—Mr Van Horn has Servd with Reputation in his Station.
if a greeable to your Excellency I Could wish he might obtain an Honorable Discharg.1 I am with Greate esteem your Excellencys most obedt Humle Servt
Wm Shepard Colo. Com.
ALS, DNA: RG 93, manuscript file no. 2243. No reply to Shepard from GW has been found.
1. A letter from Maj. Gen. Robert Howe to GW, written from the Highlands, N.Y., on 27 May, reads: “The Reasons assign’d by Doctr Van horn for retiring give him the strongest claim to indulgence, and are such as justify him to his Brigade: It is but justice to him to say, that his Conduct as far as it has been within my Observation and from accounts I have had of it from very respectable Characters has been such as merits approbation and Entitles him to Respect” (ALS, DNA: RG 93, manuscript file no. 1989). The letter’s cover reads: “favd by Doctr Van Horn.”
According to the docket of Shepard’s letter, William Van Horne (Van Horn) resigned on 2 June 1780. However, an undated document titled “Resignations of Officers received & entered at Head Qrs since the 1st of January 1780,” in the writing of GW’s aide-de-camp Robert Hanson Harrison, dates Van Horne’s resignation as 1 June (DNA:PCC, item 152).
A native of Pennsylvania, Van Horne (c.1746-1807) was ordained a Baptist pastor in 1772, and ministered to a congregation in Southampton, Pa., for the next thirteen years, with only a brief interruption during the Revolutionary War. A recipient of a Master of Arts degree from the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) in 1774, Van Horne began serving as a chaplain to Brig. Gen. John Glover’s brigade at Valley Forge, Pa., on 1 June 1778, though without an official commission. In a letter to Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates of 17 June 1779, Shepard noted that Van Horne “has ever done his duty Like a Worthy Deserving Chaplain,” and requested Gates’s assistance in having a “Sufficient Warrent” procured for him (DNA:PCC, item 78). Congress passed a resolution on 30 June 1779 appointing Van Horne chaplain to Glover’s brigade (see , 14:786). Following his resignation Van Horne returned to his congregation at Southampton. In 1785 he removed to Scotch Plains, N.J., where he was a pastor at a Baptist church until 1807. Van Horne died of “Dropsy” in Pittsburgh, Pa., “on his way to Ohio” (Hampshire Federalist [Springfield, Mass.], 3 Dec. 1807; and The Sentinel of Freedom [Newark, N.J.], 24 Nov. 1807).