On this day 250 years ago—March 11, 1775—Britain and the American colonies were not yet at war, but war was drawing nearer.
Since the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, colonial militias continued to muster as required by law and appoint officers as needed, but didn’t see much active service. As tensions grew between the colonies and Britain, though, militia training and other activities began to ramp up.
By the time this commission was issued on March 11, 1775, its signers knew that things could soon be very different. The commission names William Worthington of Saybrook, CT lieutenant colonel of Connecticut’s 7th Regiment of Horse and Foot. It is signed by Connecticut’s governor Jonathan Trumbull and secretary George Wyllys. Change was in the air, but the wording of the commission was conventional. Worthington was ordered to “take the said Regiment into your Care and Charge” and “Carefully and Diligently to discharge that Care and Trust in Ordering and Exercising of them.” He was also ordered to “Encounter, Repel, Pursue and Destroy by Force of Arms and by all fitting ways and Means, all his Majesty’s Enemies” who attacked the colony. The commission is dated “the Eleventh day of March in the Fifteenth Year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lord George the Third…”. While Worthington would indeed defend Connecticut from its enemies, none of the men whose names appear on the commission would serve King George for much longer.
Worthington served in Connecticut’s militia through at least 1780, reaching the rank of colonel. He spent the fall of 1776 stationed at Fort Ticonderoga with a regiment of Connecticut state troops. Trumbull and Wyllys joined Worthington in the revolutionary fight. Trumbull was the only British colonial governor who sided with the revolutionary movement, and he served as governor of the new state of Connecticut until 1784. While Wyllys’ personal political sympathies are not totally clear, he also retained his post during the war and served as Connecticut’s secretary until his death in 1796.
For more on the Worthington commission (object ID MS.2068), view it on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database here.