Titus Hosmer: Serving the Revolution Beyond the Battlefield

Posted on September 29, 2025

Titus Hosmer: Serving the Revolution Beyond the Battlefield

As frequent readers of our feed know, there was more than one way to serve the American cause during the Revolutionary War. Officers and soldiers who served in the field were the backbone of America’s military campaigns, but behind the scenes, thousands of others who never aimed a gun at a British soldier worked to strategize, supply, and otherwise support the army.

One of these little-known Revolutionary figures was Titus Hosmer of Connecticut. Before the war, the Yale-educated Hosmer lived in Middletown, CT, where he ran a law practice and served in the Connecticut General Assembly. As the war began, Hosmer threw himself into political work. He served on Middletown’s Committee of Correspondence and as part of the colony’s Council of Safety, which assisted Governor Jonathan Trumbull when the General Assembly wasn’t in session.

During his time in the General Assembly, Hosmer served on many subcommittees, including a committee tasked with procuring firearms and gun locks for Connecticut’s soldiers. 250 years ago today—September 29, 1775—the Committee of the Pay Table ordered that Hosmer be paid 100 pounds, which he would use “towards purchasing Three Thousand Stand of Arms for the Coleny’s Use”.

Hosmer rose to greater prominence as the war went on. In 1778 he was named part of Connecticut’s Council of Assistants to the Governor. That same year he joined the Continental Congress, where he signed the Articles of Confederation. In 1780 he was chosen as one of three judges of the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture, the first truly federal American court. If his career had continued along this trajectory, the brilliant and eloquent Hosmer might have gone on to greater heights in the early republic. However, months after his appointment to the Court of Appeals, Hosmer died of a fever in his mid-40s. While his life was cut short, Hosmer’s hard work in support of the Revolution made an impact.

Learn more about this pay order (object ID MS.7698, property of Robert Nittolo) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/31610