Continental Navy

Confederacy Account Book (1780-1781). The Account Book and Roll of the Continental Ship Confederacy, June 1780-March 1781, Item 629 located in Record Group 45 of the National Archives was transcribed by Joseph Ross in 2009. A note inside the ledger indicates it was discovered at Princeton University in 1930 and presented to the Navy Department. The history of the ledger is quite fascinating in itself. According to an article in Volume 31 of the “Princeton Alumni Weekly” from that year, the Continental Navy ledger was found in the College library with about half of its several hundred pages filled with names of book borrowers beginning in 1819. Apparently, “the hard-pressed College authorities, seeing its usefulness, appropriated it to record the circulation of the college library.” These pages of Princeton history have since been removed from the bound ledger now in the National Archives. As to how the ledger came to be at Princeton the article hypothesizes, “the most reasonable explanation of the books subsequent appearance in the library of the College of New Jersey is that it was brought here when Congress, driven from Philadelphia by a mutiny of unpaid soldiers, spent the summer of 1783 in Princeton, holding its meeting in Nassau Hall. It is known that the College library room, at present the office of the Graduate Council, was where Congress met.” The article also noted, “In the book was found a scrap of paper with ‘These men came on board’ and ten names scribbled on it…It is known that at about the date mentioned on the scrap of paper ten men were impressed by the Confederacy.” This document is no longer with the ledger.

The accounts are given in pounds/shillings/pence amounts, ie. 460.5.4 represents four hundred sixty pounds, five shillings and four pence. You will note that the totals are adjusted in the Account Book and reduced to one fortieth of their face value when paid in specie. This is an illustrative of the high rate of deflation in pay experienced by all sailors late in the war. Where Page “a” is noted, such as Page 1a, it represents a second unnumbered leaf associated with the noted page in the Account Book. An Alphabetical List of Officers and Men of the Frigate Confederacy (1781) derived from this Account Book and Roll is located elsewhere on this website and has been annotated to include position on the ship if known and offers alternate spellings of names (in parenthesis) to assist internet browsing. Continue reading →