The war was on, the Lexington and Concord fray was over, Paul Revere had made his memorable ride, and the young patriots with enthusiasm at white heat were swarming from village and countryside leaving their work and homes. Where they were going they did not know, they were going to fight with little thought of where they were to live or what they were to eat and wear. There was a continental congress but it had little authority and the fact was that very few members of that mushroom growth army even felt that they were fighting for a confederation for in their minds they were for the various states, and it was to the various states they looked for support and it was to those states that the honors were to go. It was not until the day before the battle of Bunker Hill that congress had appointed a commander-in-chief and it was almost a month later when Washington took command in Boston. There was an army of sixteen thousand men mostly from the New England States strengthened by about three thousand from the more southern states during the next month[2]. It was more nearly a mob than an army. There was no directing force, no one to superintend the building of barracks, no one to distribute food or to take charge of the supplies. The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts on hearing of Washington's appointment ordered on June 26, 1775 "the President's (of the college) house in Cambridge, excepting one room, reserved for the President for his own use, be taken, cleared, prepared, and furnished for the reception of General Washington and General Lee"[3]. It seems as though the General only occupied that house for a short time and then moved to what was called the "Craige House" for on July 8, 1775, the committee of safety directed that the house of John Vassel, a refugee loyalist, should be put in condition for the reception of the commander-in-chief and later that his welfare should be looked after, by providing him with a steward, a housekeeper, and such articles of furniture as he might ask for.[4]