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Memorial of Elisha Painter

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That your Honours' memorialist being honoured with a commission from your Honours on the fifth day of July last, to serve as a Major in a regiment ordered by your Honours to be raised for the Continental service, whereof Seth Warner, Esq˙, was appointed Colonel; and your Honours' memorialist being endowed with grateful sentiments, hath ever been disposed to pay that grateful acknowledgment which is due for the notice your Honours have taken of the faithful and arduous services of your Honours' memorialist in the defence of the rights and liberties of America, the promotion of which darling cause hath been the study and pursuit of your Honours' memorialist from the beginning of the unnatural war between Britain and the American States unto this time, and still continues disposed to the same; yet your Honours' memorialist feels himself much mortified to find (after all his unceasing endeavours to serve the publick cause, and the fatigues and hardships he hath endured therein) that two of the Captains appointed to serve in the aforesaid regiment hath manifested much uneasiness and dissatisfaction by reason your Honours' memorialist hath a commission, which they think should have been given to one of them in preference to your Honours' memorialist, which groundless uneasiness and dissatisfaction has occasioned the representation which was made to your Honours by Colonel Warner on the 10th day of September last, whereupon your Honours, on a report from the Board of War on the 12th day of the same month, resolved that your Honours' memorialist be directed to repair to the city of Philadelphia, that the matter might be inquired into. In obedience to which direction, your Honours' memorialist is now come to the aforesaid city, waiting your Honours' orders to be inquired of concerning the matter aforesaid, which matter of uneasiness and dissatisfaction represented by Colonel Warner is not through any fault or blame of your Honours' memorialist; neither is any crime or fault charged on him in said representation; and as your Honours' memorialist hath done nothing to occasion any uneasiness with the dissatisfied Captains above-mentioned, or any other person concerned in the matter, and as he is not accused of doing any thing to occasion the said dissatisfaction, he rests on your Honours' impartial inquiry into the matter; and the just settlement of the same is not doubled by your Honours' most obedient and devoted humble servant,

ELISHA PAINTER.

December 9th, 1776.