Kaaterskill Books

[Connecticut] Waldo, A. [Albigence].

[ALS] Surgeon General of the Revolutionary Army who recorded his sufferings at Valley Forge needs help with his Well.

[Connecticut]: 1793. 1 sheet. 7 x 12 inches. Very good, extremities worn, small tears along folds, light soiling. Item #44674

November 18, 1793, signed by A. Waldo, to Mr. Phillip Richmond, of Killingly [Phillip Richmond (1771-1824) son of Abilene Cady and Phillip Richmond]. Waldo tells Richmond that, "Mr. Carpenter of Abington [a small village in Pomfret where Waldo had his practice], has brought us a great stone with a hole in it, to put over one of our wells. Now we cannot get this huge stone with a hole in it, over the well, and handsomely placed there, without your assistance. Mr. Carpenter promised my wife , that he would positively come on Fryday, this week, to assist in the business. Therefore I beseech you come & help him & take your pay..." Address on verso.

Albigence Waldo (1750-1794) "was a surgeon with the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He practiced medicine in Pomfret, Connecticut, and was a founder of the Medical Society of Windham County, Connecticut. He studied medicine under John Spalding of Canterbury, Connecticut. After the commencement of hostilities with Great Britain, he served as a clerk before he was commissioned as surgeon's mate of the 8th Connecticut Regiment in 1775; he was discharged a year later due to poor health, and he was appointed chief surgeon on the armed ship Oliver Cromwell in 1776. In 1777, he was commissioned as surgeon of the 1st Connecticut Infantry Regiment. He resigned his commission in 1779, again due to his health. Waldo subsequently returned to his hometown of Pomfret and established his practice. Waldo's regiment joined the main Continental Army in the fall of 1777, and he kept a detailed diary of his life as an army surgeon and conditions of the soldiers during the winter of 1777 to 1778 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, which was published in The Historical Magazine in 1861." (See Albigence Waldo papers, 1768-1793 in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. Online at Colonial North America at Harvard Library, colonialnorthamerica.library.harvard. edu /spotlight /cna /catalog /990006035590203941 and "Valley Forge, 1777-1778. Diary of Surgeon Albigence Waldo, of the Connecticut Line" in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1897), pp. 299-323.)

Signed documents by Waldo are exceedingly rare. We could locate only two at auction.

Price: $875.00