ELIJA ROBINSON (1735-1809). American Revolutionary War officer who was a Minutemen in 1775; served with General Spencer as a Captain at Boston and was at the Battle of Bunker Hill; in 1776 led the 5th Company at Fort Ticonderoga; officer of Connecticut's State Regiments before relocating to Weathersfield, Vermont, where he became a state legislator and judge.
April 7, 1778-Dated Revolutionary War State of Connecticut Partially-Printed Document, a financial Bond of 1,000 Pounds for funding Colonel Roger Enos’s Battalion currently Raising it for the Defense of this (State) & the United State, Choice Very Fine. Impressively typeset printed and fully executed and signed, 1 page, measuring 13.5” x 8.5” on clean laid period paper dated April 7, 1778, executed at Stafford, Connecticut. Here, Elijah Robinson of Stafford and Thomas Abbe of Enfield bound themselves jointly and severally to the Governor and Company of the State of Connecticut in the penal sum of one thousand pounds lawful money, the bond's condition explaining that Robinson had just been appointed "Captain & Paymaster of a Company" in Colonel Roger Enos's battalion, then being raised "for the Defence of... the United States." The document is signed at the foot by both principals and witnessed "TEST." by John Chenward. Docket on the blank reverse reads, in full: “BOND - Capt. Elijah Robinson 1,000 pounds - April 7th, 1778.”

Roger Enos (1729-1808) was a Connecticut-born officer whose military career stretched from the French and Indian War through the Revolutionary War and into the postwar Vermont militia. Born in Simsbury, Connecticut, he first saw action in the Seven Years' War, including the 1762 British expedition against Havana, and rose to captain in Israel Putnam's regiment by 1764. When the American Revolution began, he was promoted as Major of the Second Connecticut Regiment on May 1, 1775, then Lieutenant Colonel by July 1, 1775. Enos marched his Connecticut militia to Boston after Lexington and Concord and fought at Bunker Hill during the early Siege of Boston. His most historically consequential and controversial role came that autumn, when he was chosen as one of three battalion commanders (alongside Daniel Morgan and Christopher Greene) for Benedict Arnold's expedition through the Maine wilderness to attack Quebec. Enos commanded the rear division and its supplies. Enos made the fateful decision to turn back with roughly 300 men and most of the expedition's remaining supplies, rather than push on toward Quebec with Arnold's main force. He was court-martialed on December 1, 1775, for "quitting without leave," but was honorably acquitted, a verdict that has divided historians ever since, some crediting his judgment for saving his men's lives, others faulting him for weakening Arnold's already desperate assault on Quebec. Enos then left Continental service on December 10, 1775. After returning to Connecticut service, Enos held a series of Connecticut militia and state-troop commands: Colonel of the Sixteenth Connecticut Militia (resigned January 18, 1776), and Colonel of another regiment from 1777 through 1779-1780. Connecticut's official Revolutionary War service records list a "Col. Roger Enos's Regiment on the Hudson, 1778" about the time of this current funding.

Robinson's Revolutionary War service began the previous year, when he took a captaincy in Colonel John Ely's Connecticut State Regiment in June 1777; his appointment under Enos that spring placed him with a unit that spent 1778's campaign season posted along the Hudson River. Roger Enos was by then a veteran Connecticut officer, having commanded the rear guard on Benedict Arnold's 1775 march to Quebec before turning back for want of supplies; acquitted at the court martial that followed, he resigned his Continental commission in 1776 and was given command of one of Connecticut's state regiments, forces that, unlike Continental units, remained under the direct orders of the governor and council.

In the years following the war Robinson resettled in Vermont's Weathersfield township, holding local office as selectman and representing the town in the state legislature; he attained the rank of colonel in the Vermont militia and sat on the Windsor County Court bench, and died there in 1809.


Elijah Robinson was born in Windham, Connecticut. in 1735, and served honorably during the Revolutionary War as an officer in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army and Connecticut's state troops. He first served as a Minuteman, responding to the Lexington Alarm of April 1775 as captain in General Spencer's 2nd Regiment through 1775, stationed at Roxbury during the Siege of Boston (disbanded December 19, 1775). He served with Moulton's company for 10 days, likely marching to Cambridge with it, then on May 1, 1775 was commissioned as a captain-lieutenant in the 2nd Connecticut Regiment, which would soon become part of the Continental Army.

In June or July 1776, Robinson was commissioned as a captain in Colonel Samuel Mott's State Regiment, a regiment raised by the state of Connecticut to reinforce the Northern Department of the Continental Army. For part of his 1776 service Robinson was stationed at Fort Ticonderoga. After his service in Mott's regiment ended in December 1776, Robinson served for several campaigns in Connecticut's state troops. Beginning in June 1777 he served as a captain in Colonel John Ely's State Regiment, likely serving within Connecticut, and from April-September 1778 he served as a captain in Colonel Roger Enos's State Regiment, which was stationed somewhere on the Hudson River. Captain of his own company in 1778, engaged for a three-month term, with his company arriving in camp on June 29, 1778, this is the Connecticut state-troop enlistment the current April 7, 1778 bond he would have been organizing and financing in advance.

Connecticut's 1778 state levies, the short-term state regiments (as opposed to the Continental Line) raised to reinforce Washington's army or guard the state's exposed coastline and the Hudson corridor, required each company or regimental paymaster to post a surety bond before he could legally receive and disburse public funds to his men. This was standard fiscal practice: the paymaster (often the captain himself, as here, doubling in that role for his own company) was personally bonded to the state treasury as a guarantee against misappropriation or accounting shortfalls. The April 7, 1778 date fits neatly with the spring recruiting and financial organization that preceded his company's arrival in camp that June 29th, Robinson would have needed to be bonded as paymaster before drawing the funds to enlist, equip, and pay his men.

Robinson is not known to have served again after 1778. Sometime after the Revolutionary War Robinson moved to the newly established town of Weathersfield, VT, where he served as a selectman and represented the town in Vermont's state legislature. He reached the rank of colonel in Vermont's militia and was offered a position as Brigadier General but declined. He also served as a judge of the Windsor County Court from 1782-1787 and 1788-1801, then as chief judge in 1802. Robinson died in Weathersfield in 1809.

Enos went on to a prominent postwar career in Vermont, becoming a Major General in the Vermont Militia, a member of the Vermont House of Representatives, and a University of Vermont trustee Enosburgh, Vermont is named for him which adds further collecting interest to signed material from his earlier Connecticut service, as pre-Vermont documents are the rarer half of his paper trail.