Washington, George. George Washington Papers, Series 5, Financial Papers: George Washington's Revolutionary War Expense Account, -1783. /1783, 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress

pid

washingtonrevolutionarywarexpenses

label

Washington, George. George Washington Papers, Series 5, Financial Papers: George Washington's Revolutionary War Expense Account, -1783. /1783, 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress

Timestamp

10/25/2021 16:59:32

URL for full object

https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw500022/

Citation for full object

Washington, George. George Washington Papers, Series 5, Financial Papers: George Washington's Revolutionary War Expense Account, -1783. /1783, 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mgw500022/>.

Filename in shared drive folder

WashingtonRevolutionaryWarExpenses

General description of the complete original artifact

This is a 92-page collection of all expenses incurred by George Washington as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, specifically during the year 1775. All the data included were hand-written, presumably by Washington himself, and the handwriting was uniform throughout the document. Washington refused to accept a salary from the Congress and instead offering to claim only his expenses, therefore, he composed the document and presented it to the Congress. Each of the pages consist of 6 columns, starting from the left is date, expenses entries, paid (assume that it means the amount is already covered anyway) and liable (assume that it means the Congress would have to pay him), which is written in three columns in term of pound-shilling-pence in separated columns.

Estimated number of records in data set

2000

Estimated number of fields if this were a database

7

Estimated time to digitize all records in set (hours)

700

Time period when data was created

1783

Organization creating data

George Washington

Individual who created data (if known or guessable).

George Washington

Shortcomings of this taxonomy for data set (if any)

As a formal document for presenting expenses, the document served its function well. Shortcomings, if any, would be its format. In term of formatting, it didn't include specific expenses but only the creditor's name in form of "To Somebody", which might seems not clear enough for the Congress to examine the cash flow. However, given that this was Washington who compiled the document himself, his credit might be enough already.

Notes about the image you chose

This is the third page of the document, also hand-written, composed by Washington. Its records followed the rubric, which is date-expenses-paid-liable. Noticeably, the "liable" section is spanned across three columns as the currency back then was still the British pound-shilling-pence system. Given that what Washington wanted the Congress to focus on is the "liable" part as the aim of the document was to have the stated amount paid, he separated one column into three parts, which created more fields and a clearer representation that served the aim.