Revolutionary War rations - bread with water

Lea flour mills along the Brandywine near Wilmington, Del. provided flour for Washington's soldiers.  Thomas Lea married George Ellicott's daughter.  Soldiers received a pound of flour per day ration, but bakers could add more water to make a pound loaf of bread, and keep the excess flour.



General Henry Knox wrote to Gen. George Washington in March 1781 -

"These bakers receive the flour from the soldiers and return them a pound of bread for a pound of flour, by which means the bakers make a neat profit to themselves of 30 percent in flour; and often times more, as they put as great a proportion of water as they please, there being no person whose duty it is to superintend them. 

This flour the bakers sell to the country people in the vicinity of the camp, to the infinite damage of the public or occupy public waggons, when the camp happens to move, to carry it away to a better market. Last year at Tappan, one or two soldiers who baked for part of one of the regiments of artillery, consisting of not more than 250 or 300 men, saved such a stock on hand of the profits of baking for a short time, as to be able, on an emergency, to lend the Commissary of the Park a sufficiency to issue one thousand rations for eight days ... 

Owing to this variety of waste and bad management the same quantity of flour does not serve the troops so long a time by nearly one third, as it would were it under a proper oeconomical regularity."

To George Washington from Henry Knox.  24 March 1781  Library of Congress HERE

©2018 Patricia Bixler Reber
Forgotten history of Ellicott City & Howard County MD