About This Collection
This series includes letters, reports, notes, drafts of letters and accounts, and copies of taxation acts dating from 1776-1809. The majority of the correspondence comes from county tax collectors, other county or militia officers, and state officers asking for the reimbursement of outstanding bills or explaining why their accounts are late or out of order. Also included is correspondence from the U.S. Congress, the Commonwealth Assembly, and the Council of Censors. These letters include requests for payments to various officials, bills for services provided by laborers, and requests for account books to be audited. Extracts from minutes of the Pennsylvania Assembly, Congress, and Council of Censors regarding expenditures, receipts, and orders of payment affecting the Comptroller General are also included. Miscellaneous letters from taxpayers regarding their inability to pay and questioning the rate at which they were taxed, as well as letters from soldier's widows who never received their husbands pay are also contained within this series. The General Correspondence has a rather complex arrangement. For the most part, it is arranged chronologically by the month, day and year letters were written. If there is no date for when they were written, letters are filed by the month, day and year they were received by the Comptroller General. Records that do not note the day they were written or received are filed at the end of the month and year they are dated. If only the year the record was written or received is known, it is filed after December 31 for that year. Copies of records are filed by the date they were copied. If there is no copy date, they are filed under the date of they were received. Correspondence lacking dates entirely is filed under "no date" [n.d.]. If the correspondence was addressed to a Comptroller General, they are filed at the end of his term(s) of office. Undated records without addresses are filed in the back of carton 15. This collection is part of the Office of the Comptroller General which was created in 1782.