“… I remember, when at Providence, Mr. Manning mentioned once to me that the Corporation of the Colledge had a demand for Rent & Damages done the building, when employed as Barracks but the Acct. never was exhibited. I do not know the reason, as I looked on my appointment to settle any Claim, under proper Certificates and Vouchers. I should be happy it it was in my power to give you any information in the matter that so just a claim may be liquidated, but I never had any Acct.of the demand…”

James Manning was the first President of Rhode Island College, which in 1804 would be renamed Brown University. When British and Hessian troops landed in Newport in December 1776, as Manning later wrote, “this brought their Camp in plain View from the College…upon which the Country flew to Arms & marched for Providence, there, unprovided with barracks, they marched into the College and dispossessed the Students, about 40 in number.”  With the institution closed to students for five years, Washington’s troops used the College building for barracks and a hospital until April 1780, and French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau used it as a hospital from June 1780 to May 1782. After the War, in 1783, Congress provided for Commissioners to settle War debts between the federal Government and the various states, stipulating that no Commissioner should come from the particular State whose claims he was adjudicating.  During the War, Edward Chinn, a New York lawyer, describing himself  to General Gates as “one of those Persons, who was obliged to leave Canada, when the American Army retreated thereform and waiting with expectation of one day being able to return”, served as commissioner of accounts for the department of the Continental Army which included Rhode Island, and, post-war, as commissioner of claims for that state. When his work was done, he remained in New York, dying in Albany in 1802.