General Orders, 30 September 1780
General Orders
Head Quarters Orangetown Saturday September 30th 1780
Parole Green: Countersigns, Greece, Guard.
Watchword Gallant
[Officers] For the day Tomorrow[:] Brigadier General Clinton[,] Colonel Vose[,] Lieutenant Colonel Badlam[,] Major Throop[,] Brigade Major Darby
For Detachment[:] Major Winslow
The Brigade Quarter masters are to make out returns of the number of Tents absolutely wanting to cover the men agreeably to the regula-tions;1 These to be signed by the officers commanding brigades and sent to the Quarter master’s store this afternoon.
Twelve waggoners to be drafted from the line and sent to the Grand parade tomorrow at Guard mounting.
Colonel Pickering having been appointed by the Honorable the Congress Quarter Master General to the Army of the United States; he is to be obeyed and respected as such.2 Henry Emanuel Lutterloh Esquire is also appointed Commissary of Forage.
As the direction of the Waggon Department is a charge of great importance (in foreign Armies generally intrusted to a Field officer of the line) and as it is thought the service will be benefitted by a similar practice in our Army Major Cogswell of the first Massachusett’s regiment is appointed Waggon Master to the Main Army and is to be obeyed as such.3
The Commander in Chief takes this occasion to thank Major General Greene for the able and satisfactory manner in which he discharged the duties of the Quarter Master General’s department during his continuance in office; and to Express his Approbation of his Conduct and orders in the Absence of the General.4
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. The regulations allowed “one tent for the non-commissioned officers of each company, and one for every six men, including the drums and fifes” (, 77).
3. Q.M. Gen. Timothy Pickering had written GW from camp at Tappan on 28 Sept.: “I am authorized, with your approbation, to take from the line of the army ‘such & so many officers to serve in my department as I may find necessary, and as are willing to engage in the business.[’] In consequence hereof I have agreed to appoint Major Cogswell waggon master for the main army, if your excellency should approve of it. I find it has been the usual practice in the German armies to appoint a field officer to that duty; and am led to think a similar appointment with us would be attended with advantages: but as it will be novel, I could wish, if your excellency should think proper, to announce Major Cogswell’s appointment in some such manner as is mentioned in the inclosed paper.
“I shall be obliged to your excellency to inform the army of my appointment as quarter master general, and that of Henry Emanuel Lutterloh Esqr. whom I have appointed commissary of forage” (AL [missing final word and closing], DLC:GW; copy, MHi: Pickering Papers). The enclosure modeled the paragraph in these general orders announcing Maj. Thomas Cogswell’s appointment (DLC:GW; see also , 17:624).