One of the earliest acts of the New York Provincial Congress was the promise on May 24, 1775, to repay all monies advanced for the resistance to British domination. When the old colonial government was gradually superseded in 1774 and 1775 by an extra-legal government of committees and congresses chosen by the people, these bodies were met immediately by the problem of financing both the political activities and the military operations. The latter began with the plans to seize Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, shortly after the colonists had been electrified by the news of Lexington and Concord.
The situation was serious but not hopeless. Although the administration of the colony was changed by the election of revolutionary committees and a congress, yet much of the colonial government still operated. This was particularly true of the machinery in control of finances.
The county treasurers, boards of supervisors, assessors and collectors continued to hold office and thus supplied trained officers for collecting taxes. The old colonial treasury was placed under the control of the Provincial Congress but it gradually ceased to function.
At the same time it was felt that some financial agency should be created which would be more directly responsible to the supreme revolutionary authority in the Province of New York. Consequently, on July 8, 1775, only a little over a fortnight after convening, the Provincial Congress selected Peter Van Brugh Livingston (1710-1792), its first president, as a special treasurer to handle all funds for the general defense.
Thus for something over a year there were two treasurers of New York — the colonial treasurer continuing from colonial days and the revolutionary treasurer appointed for the emergency.
Taxes & Revolutionary Spending
So arduous were the duties of Peter Van Brugh Livingston that on August 28, 1775, Gerard Bancker (1740-1799) was chosen as his assistant. Some idea of the importance of the office may be obtained from the fact that the receipts for the first 16 months of the war approximated $620,000, and most of it was disbursed for state service.
At the same time for the year following August 23, 1775, the treasurer received from the Second Continental Congress about $387,000 and used it for national service. On April 22, 1776, “the [liquor] excise [tax]” was collected from seventy-five persons, of whom a dozen were women. The names of about 280 “New York liquor sellers” for that year are preserved.
In colonial days the money needed to run the government had been raised largely from duties on exports and imports, on slaves, on distilled liquors, on goods sold at public sales, licenses, etc. Whenever some emergency, like war, necessitated a larger sum, it was raised by a tax on land and personal property.
This tax was apportioned among the counties. The assessors decided the amount of tax each person should pay. The collectors gathered in the money and paid it over to the county treasurer. In turn the county treasurers sent the funds collected to the treasurer of the colony. The Assembly then made its appropriations.
The colonial records seem to indicate that after the French and Indian War (1754-1763), no taxes were levied directly on land and personal property by the colonial legislature for the support of the colonial government.
According to Governor William Tryon (1728-1788) the cost of the government of New York in 1773 was £17,567, of which £5,600 came from interest on loans to the people, £6000 from duties and revenues, and the balance from fines, fees, licenses, and the excise.
In 1762 the counties and cities of New York still owed in back taxes £7,716, the cities of New York and Albany being the most delinquent. Indeed as late as 1772 the government was still attempting to collect these old taxes from the city of New York.
Although apparently free from direct taxes on lands and personal property by the colonial government after 1762, the people of the colony seem to have been called upon to pay such taxes when levied by the county authorities, for the Assembly enacted laws authorizing Albany, New York, Orange, Ulster and Westchester counties to adopt more effective and equitable methods of assessment and collection.
Freedom from general direct colonial taxes for a decade before the Revolutionary War may explain in part the tumult caused by the attempt of the British parliament to tax a people accustomed only to local taxes.
Royal Treasurer Abraham Lott Remains
When the Revolution became armed resistance in 1775 and immediately entailed a heavy expense, Abraham Lott (1726-1794) was treasurer of the New York colony. His office was not abolished, as has been seen, and he was recognized as an official until the fall of 1776.
As contractor for victualing British ships, the Provincial Congress permitted him to supply bread, meat, flour, salt, butter and rum to English vessels in New York Harbor, such as the Asia, King’s Fisher, and Nautilus, until the close of February, 1776, when that business was stopped.
He was required to send lists of all such supplies to the Provincial Congress however, together with an account of the money received.
[A prominent merchant, land investor, and the Colonial Treasurer of the Province of New York from 1767 until the Revolution disrupted British governance, Abraham Lott initially cooperated with the Patriots to keep public services running, but eventually came under suspicion due to his ties to the British colonial administration.]
Lott was called upon to loan funds to the Provincial Congress “for the present emergency” and all the members of that body voted on May 31, 1775, “to be responsible.” For example, on June 2, 1775, on order of the Provincial Congress, one Clarkson asked Abraham Lott to lend him £200, which was done and that sum was paid to Dirck Swart for public services.
[A teenage New York aristocrat who later served as Major General in the Continental Army and an aide-de-camp to General Benedict Arnold and General Benjamin Lincoln, in the Revolutionary War Matthew Clarkson (1758-1825) acted as a courier for the Provincial Congress, physically transporting large sums of money to revolutionaries in the field.]
[Dirck Swart was a prominent Patriot leader, merchant, and politician from Stillwater, then part of Albany County. He served as a delegate to the New York Provincial Congress representing Albany and later his house served as General Philip Schuyler‘s headquarters during the 1777 Saratoga Campaign.]
[The £200 paid to him was immediately following the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775, when Swart was sent north to evaluate the fort’s conditions, procure emergency provisions, and coordinate the transport of the fort’s cannons and gunpowder southward down Lake George. This task was undertaken by Henry Knox‘s Noble Train of Artillery during the following winter of 1775–1776.]
The same day Colonel Abraham Ten Broeck (1734-1810) and Dirck Swart obtained from Lott “an order on the loan offices of the city and county of Albany” for £700 to be used “for the public exigencies of the colony.” Ten Broeck gave his note to Lott and the Provincial Congress voted to assume the obligation.
[Because hard currency (specie) was scarce, the provincial government used credit. Obtaining an “order on the loan offices of the city and county of Albany” allowed Ten Broeck and Swart to draw paper credit, issue treasury notes, and borrow funds directly against public credit to pay for soldier bounties, supplies, and fortifications.]
On July 12, 1775, Egbert Dumond asked Lott for an order on the loan offices of Ulster County to send flour to Albany. The notes of Clarkson and Ten Broeck to Lott were presented to the Provincial Congress on November 4th. For money thus advanced receipts and even notes were given.
[Egbert Dumond (1732-1798) was Patriot from Ulster County who later served as Sheriff in Kingston in 1779.]
With the intention of using the colonial funds for military purposes, the Provincial Congress on February 21, 1776 appointed a committee of four to examine the accounts of Lott, as colonial treasurer, and report on the funds in his hands. At that time apparently there was no thought either of abolishing that office or of transferring the monies to the special treasurer chosen by the Provincial Congress.
When the interest and 10 percent of the principal on a 1771 loan by the Royal Province of New York of £120,000 fell due in April 1776, the Provincial Congress ordered on March 9th that since the war made it difficult for the people to make their payments the portion of the principal due might be suspended for one year.
The interest paid in went to Lott and not to Livingston together with the principal, and was lent out again by the former in order to meet the purposes of the act of 1771. On the other hand, when the Provincial Congress issued its first paper money in 1776, it was placed in its own treasury and not turned over to Lott.
By this time, it may be said that the revolutionary government of New York had assumed all the financial obligations of the colonial government and also insisted upon collecting all debts due it.
Any surplus, it was felt, might be used legitimately to finance the war. This was a revolutionary procedure of much consequence which has been entirely overlooked.
Revolutionaries Command NY’s Treasury
On March 9, 1776, Abraham Lott was ordered within 30 days to report on oath all “public revenues” in his hands and to state to what funds they belonged. Failing to do so, the Convention on September 17, 1776, summoned him to appear before it immediately with his account books, papers and money, in order that the balance in his possession might be turned over “to the present Treasurer of this State.”
If he refused to appear within 5 days, he was to be seized and brought under arrest to the Convention. At the same time it was voted that Lott “cease to demand or receive any monies belonging” to New York, and that Peter Van Brugh Livingston, as State Treasurer, should receive the same. By this action the old office of treasurer was virtually abolished and a new State Treasurer substituted.
At last word came from Lott that a “wounded wrist” and an attack of the gout had made it impossible to answer his summons, but that he would appear shortly. On October 9, 1776, he said that he was gathering his paper together and would soon present his report. A memorandum made out about a month later showed that duties amounting to over £316 were still owing from twenty-eight persons.
Nothing further appears in the records until April 24, 1777, when the “late Treasurer of the Colony of New York” appeared. A committee of three was asked to confer with him and report, with instructions to allow his salary up to September 17, 1777.
It was reported that Lott owed the State £24,870 but that he had in hand only £3,000, the balance having been invested in the Danish Islands [these islands became the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1911].
The Provincal Congress on May 8, 1777, ordered Lott to turn over to the State Treasurer the cash in his possession and all his records together with an exact statement of his accounts. Apparently no settlement was made, for as late as May 12, 1784, the State Legislature was still trying to collect the balance due the State either from him or his bondsmen.
This experience of the revolutionary government with the legitimate treasurer of the colony is given at length because it illustrates the method by which the colonial financial machinery together with such resources as were available was taken over by the patriots, and also the precautions observed to do it in an orderly manner.
The First State Treasurer & Comptroller
One of the earliest acts of the State Legislature was the appointment of Gerard Bancker on April 1, 1778, as the State Treasurer, succeeding Peter Van Brugh Livingston, appointed by the Convention in 1776. He was reappointed for short terms throughout the Revolutionary War and his bond was fixed at $10,000.
The State Treasurer was a most important official because upon him fell the task of raising money and paying bills. In this difficult work Gerard Bancker’s duties were as important as those of a governor or a general.
With his famous iron money chest, moving about from the city of New York to Rochester, Hurley [both in Ulster County], Poughkeepsie, Kingston and finally Albany, he had to be an authority on colonial, continental, state and foreign money. The various kinds of bills, notes and certificates were most confusing, and depreciation added to the chaotic condition.
Associated with Bancker as Auditor Generals were Comfort Sands (1748-1834) and Peter T. Curtenius (1734–1798), who were appointed in 1776 to settle the public accounts in 1776, shared the vexations and perplexities of his office.
[Comfort Sands served as New York State’s first Auditor-General (now known as the Comptroller) from 1776 until his resignation in 1782. He was a founder of New York’s oldest bank, the Bank of New York, in 1784. He in the State Assembly from New York County in 1784–85, 1788 and 1788–89 and was President of the New York Chamber of Commerce from 1794 to his death in 1798.]
[Peter Curtenius was a member of the New York Committee of Correspondence and was appointed a Colonel and Commissary General on May 31, 1775 by the Provincial Congress, in charge of purchasing provisions for Patriot military forces. He was appointed New York State Auditor in 1782 to replace Comfort Sands, serving until the creation of the office of Comptroller in 1797.]
[The new Comptroller Samuel Jones (1734-1819) was appointed by a Council of Appointment to a one-year term, and could be re-appointed without term limit. When the State Legislature reduced his salary from $3,000 to $2,500 in 1800, Jones declined re-appointment.]
Read more about New York in the American Revolution.
This essay is drawn, with minor editing for clarity, from Peter Nelson’s “The American Revolution in New York; its political, social and economic significance. For general use as part of the program of the Executive committee on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American revolution,” published by the University of the State of New York’s Division of Archives and History in 1926. It was annotated by John Warren.
Illustrations, from above: A seven-dollar banknote issued by the Second Continental Congress in 1775; Portrait of Peter Van Brugh Livingston after Henry Raeburn; map of New York in 1775-1783; portrait of Clarkson by Gilbert Stuart, ca. 1794 (Metropolitan Museum of Art); and a portrait of Comfort Sands by an unknown artist.
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