Letter from Francis Ware to the Maryland Council of Safety

v6:630

Baltimore, May 31, 1776.

GENTLEMEN: The bearer will produce to the Board three gun-locks, sent by Mr˙ Messersmith for your inspection, who tells me he has now twenty-five more finished off, and if the publick will encourage him properly, he can finish ten or twelve per week. I believe the encouragement he expects is three dollars per lock. If you approve of the work and price, please to let me know by a line, and I will order him to employ all his hands in that business.

I am under the necessity of soliciting a sum of publick money, to be lodged in the hands of some gentlemen in or near this place, to discharge contingencies, as I find it impossible to furnish our Hospitals with proper necessaries for the like, such as milk, vegetables, &c˙, without ready money.

There are also blankets wanting for the sick, which cannot be got without the money. I have been obliged to borrow twenty odd pounds since I came here, to pay the people who are at work on our tents, tent-poles, beds for the sick, &c˙, &c˙, who are chiefly needy, and must have a little money to go to market.

I am, gentlemen, very respectfully, your obedient, humble servant,
FRANCIS WARE.

To the Honourable the Council of Safety of Maryland.