From George Washington to Robert Spotswood, 31 October 1755
To Robert Spotswood
[31 October 1755]
To Captain Robert Spotswood, of the Virginia Regiment.
You are hereby ordered, as soon as the Clothes and Arms arrive to furnish all the men who now Rendezvous at Fredericksburgh, with both; and march them immediately with the utmost dispatch to Fort Cumberland, to reinforce the Garrison. When you arrive at Winchester, you must provide your men with Cartridges. You are to be very careful and circumspect in your march; and see that your men do not on any account whatsoever, plunder or pillage the Houses which the people have deserted, or any others, or Plantations. Lieutenant Frazier and Ensign Carter, are appointed to this Command.1 Given &c.
G:W.
LB, DLC:GW.
1. The careers in the Virginia Regiment of both Lt. George Fraser and Ens. Thomas Carter were brief. Carter was killed, along with Capt. John Fenton Mercer and 15 soldiers, in a skirmish with the Indians on 18 April 1756 near Joseph Edwards’s fort on the Cacapon River. George Fraser, from Spotsylvania County, stayed close to home in nearby Fredericksburg where for a time GW put him in charge of receiving recruits. Fraser resigned his commission in early 1756 rather than go, as GW ordered, to Peter Hog’s company at Fort Dinwiddie in Augusta County. He served as a captain in the Spotsylvania County militia in 1758 and died in Spotsylvania in 1763, leaving a widow and two daughters.