This item is a wonderful,original document dated 1801, the port of Charlestown, Massachsuetts where David Bates aboard the schooner Susan has returned from Baltimore with Russian goods...signed by Benjamin Lincoln as Collector and James Lovell as Naval Officer...8x14, folds,older tape re-enforcement on back side fold lines, else fine

James Lovell, patriot, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 31 October, 1737 ; died in Windham, Maine, 14 July, 1814, was graduated at Harvard in 1756, and was his father's assistant in the South grammar-or Latin-school till it was dispersed on 19 April, 1775, on account of the siege. He was also master of the North grammar-school, afterward called the Eliot school. He delivered, 2 April, 1771, the first anniversary oration on the Boston massacre. In the Revolution he took the side of the Whigs, and was imprisoned after the battle of Bunker Hill, carried to Halifax with the British army, and kept in close confinement, while his father was there as a Tory refugee, until, in November, 1776, he was exchanged for Colonel Philip Skene.

On his return to Boston he was elected a member of the Continental congress, and served from December, 1776, till 1782. During the quarrel between General Horatio Gates and General Philip Schuyler, early in 1777, Lovell was a correspondent and confidant of the former, and the recipient of his plan of campaign. He encouraged Gates in dealing directly with congress, over the head of General Washington, and was one of the malcontents that sought to make Gates commander-in-chief, threatening Washington, in a letter dated 11 October, 1777, with a "torrent of public clamor and vengeance," and in another describing him as a general that collected men to wear out shoes and breeches, and that had "Fabi-used matters into a very disagreeable posture."

Lovell was a diligent member of the committee on foreign correspondence. Some of his letters were printed in Richard H. Lee's life of his brother Arthur. He was receiver of taxes at Boston from 1784 till 1788, then collector of the port till 1790, and after that naval officer till his death

Benjamin Lincoln (24 January 1733–9 May 1810) was a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

In 1776, he was promoted to brigadier general, then major general, then commander of all Massachusetts troops in the Boston area. After the British evacuation of Boston, Lincoln joined General George Washington at New York, commanding the right wing at the Battle of White Plains. Shortly after seeing action at Fort Independence, he was commissioned into the Continental Army as a major general.

From 1781 through late 1783 or early 1784, Lincoln served as the first "Secretary of War," also called the "Secretary at War." He was appointed by the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation.

In 1787, Lincoln was a member of the Massachusetts state convention that ratified the United States Constitution. Earlier in 1787, Lincoln helped put an end to an uprising of farmers known as Shays' Rebellion. The uprising, which led to calls for a stronger central U.S. government, ended when the militia under Major General Benjamin Lincoln attacked the rebels and forced them to surrender in February.

He stayed active in public life in various capacities, including a term as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and many years as the Collector of the Port of Boston. He retired from public life in 1809 and died in Hingham on May 9, 1810.

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