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[W. Rumsey to Council.]
November 30th 1776.
May it please your Honors.
Were I to consider my business, which is difficult to trans-
act, that I must load a Sloop for sea before the Frost, & not
an article of her Cargoe purchased, — I am afraid it would be
an insufficient reason for my not appearing before your Hon-
orable Board, because private ought to give way to public
concerns.
If your Honors are acquainted I have large quantities of
wheat at different creeks in our Bay to be brought up, and
carried across to Appo. for merchants in Phila that from the
difficulty of procuring craft and waggons no person but
myself can superintend these affairs, it will serve probably as
an apology for my not attending.
The Levy court will come on the middle of December if I
am absent a number of Poor must suffer, especially as Colo
Veazey & Capt. Hyland will be at Annapolis, and perhaps
other Magistrates detained at home by sickness, bad weather
or other accidents.
But there may be an attack on the Deleware. if I leave
the county, it may be said, " he has shielded himself in the
Council of Safety "
If depredations should be made by the Enemy on that
neighbouring State, from the vicinity, interest and generosity
of the Battalion in which I am engaged, they will certainly
march to their assistance and will as assuredly expect my
presence, in our present situation we want rather hearts than
heads while your Honors are at the Helm.
These last reasons have more weight with me than any
other. Indeed it gives me pain to decline any appointment
of the Convention, or so polite an Invitation from your honors,
which if it were not for the above cogent objections would be
a mandate to Your Honor's
Most obedient humble Servt
Wm Rumsey.
[Chase to Council.]
Saturday morning,
Philadelphia Nov. 30th 1776.
Gentlemen.
By a resolve of Congress of the 12th of October 1775 each
Captain and other commissioned officer, while in the recruit-
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