Departments have deemd it proper that accounts for the pay and expenses of the Ordnance Department exclu=sive of the purchase of Stores, — annuities, and compensations in the Indian Department, and generally all expenses incidental thereto other than for the purchase of supplies as are proper to be made by the Purveyor and accounted for to the Superintendant of Military Stores and Supplies: should be liquidated at this Office. You will therefore confine yourself to those offices in forming your abstracts, and all which do not come within the description before mentioned, keep a seperate account of, and transmit it to this Office, and from hence it will pursue its proper course to the Departments where it should by law meet a settlement. Sam Ser 46 W^m Simmons Acct --- M. G. Houdin Accountants Office Ordnance & m^r Store keeper April 19^th 1797 Albany Sir The Secretary of War has thought proper to augment your Salary to Two hundred & ten dollars p^r annum including Rations and every other emoluments, to commence on the first day of the present year. Your Salary therefore from the 1^st January to 31^st March 1797 amounts to one hundred & twenty seven dollars which will be remittd you by Samuel Lewis Sen^r Clerk in the War Office; on the receiving the same you will be pleased to transmit him your duplicate receipts for the amount.