On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, William Milnor replied to a letter from George Washington in Mount Vernon requesting arms for the Fairfax Independent Company that:

 I engaged 40 Musquets this Morning. Mr Palmer says he will certainly have them all ready by the first of Aprill. The Cartouch boxes, I have agreed for, at a Dollar each—I intend having one Musquet & one Cartouch box finishd & put on board of Capt. Cobourn, who is now ready to sail, but the navigation being intirely stop’d, with the Ice, Must wait for the first slatch, the Drums Coulers & fifes are already on board, please to let me know whether you will have the Musquets Number’d, & whether any letters on them, this will be no additional Expence, the Cartouch boxes likewise may be letter’d without Expence.

Source: “To George Washington from William Milnor, 3 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0160. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 10, 21 March 1774 – 15 June 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, p. 224.] available at https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%223%20January%201775%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=7&sr=

Also on this day in Braintree, Massachusetts, John Adams wrote separate letters to his friends James Warren and his wife Mercy Otis Warren in nearby Plymouth. To James Warren, Adams passed along a prosaic report from his friend Samuel Chase in Maryland regarding the resolutions passed by the Maryland Provincial Convention in the prior month. Adams and Chase reported that the Maryland Convention had unanimously passed resolutions supporting the Continental Association boycott of trade with Britain, formation and arming of the militia and support for the people of Boston.

Adams’ letter to Mercy Otis Warren waxed much more poetic. Referring to himself in the third person, Adams wrote:

he is too old to make a Figure in Arms the Profession to which We must for the future perhaps be obliged for our Safety and our Liberty as much as formerly we were to that of the Law. If the Standards should be erected, and A Camp formed, however, ten to one but he flies to it, but whether it will be for shelter, or as a volunteer, Time alone must discover.

Sources: “From John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, 3 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0068. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 209–211.] available at https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%223%20January%201775%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=2&sr=

“From John Adams to James Warren, 3 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0067. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 208–209.] available at https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%223%20January%201775%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=1&sr=