“The Commissioner thinking that a company of fifty men under your command are sufficient to guard the frontier along the Kittektiny Hills, from your own house to Hunter’s Mill, have refused for the present to take any other men in that quarter into the pay of the Government, and requested me to order, and I do hereby order you to detach twenty-five of the men now at your house, to the fort at Hunter’s Mill, upon Susquehanna, under the command of your lieutenant, or officer next under yourself, or in case there be none such appointed by the Government, then under the command of such person as you shall appoint for that service; and you are to give orders to the commander of such detachment to keep his men in order and fit for duty, and to cause a party of them, from time to time, to range the woods along and near the mountains toward your house; and you are in like manner to keep the men with you in good order, and to cause a party of them from time to time, to range the woods on or near the mountains toward Hunter’s Mill, and you and they are to continue upon this service till further order. “You are to add ten men to your company out of the township of Paxton, and to make the detachment at Hunter’s Mill of twenty more men, which with those ten, are to complete thirty for service, and keep an account of the time when these ten enter themselves, that you may be enabled to make up your muster roll upon oath.” Hardly had the above order been executed and the men recruited until additional orders were dispatched by the Governor to Captain Read: “I have also appointed Thomas McKee to take post at or near Hunter’s Mill with thirty men.” An interesting sentence in his letter revealed the hardships of a Provincial soldier: “But as the Province is at present in want of arms and blankets, if any of the men you shall enlist will find themselves with those articles, they shall receive half a dollar for the use of their gun, and half a dollar for the use of a blanket.” At the same time Governor Morris wrote to James Galbraith, Esq., a Provincial Commissioner, rehearsing the sundry orders given to Captains Read and McKee, to which he added: “I have also instructed Capt. McKee to advise with you whether to finish the fort already begun at Hunter’s Mill, or to build a new one, and as to the place where it would be best to erect such new one. I therefore desire you will assist him in those matters, or in anything else that the King’s service and the safety of the inhabitants may require.” On December 9, 1755, Thomas Foster and Thomas McKee were furnished with “12½ pounds powder and 25 pounds swan shot.” It is therefore more than probable the soldiers ordered there in January, 1756, by Governor Morris were the first Provincial soldiers put on duty at Fort Hunter.