The Seth Drew papers (23 items) hold the official correspondence of Seth Drew, the superintendent of fortifications for the Army Corps of Engineers between 1808 and 1812. These letters contain detailed instructions from Joseph Gardner Swift, major of engineers, on the construction and workings of the fort at Plymouth. They also include a rough architectural sketch of a barrack. Jacob Eustis, agent at Boston, wrote about supplying Plymouth with cannon and military stores. Other letters are from Army administrators, particularly from the Accountants Office of the Department of War; these letter-writers include William Eustis, Peter Hagner, William Simmons, and Henry Whiting. In one letter, Henry Whiting described the course of events during the first year of the War of 1812, and commented on the "destitute and miserable conditions" of soldiers returning from prisons in Canada.
Seth Drew (1747-1824) was born in Kingston, Massachusetts, to Cornelius and Sarah Drew. He married Hannah Brewster, daughter of Wrestling Brewster, on December 3, 1772, and worked in Kingston as a ship-builder. In 1775, after getting news of the Battle at Lexington, Drew joined the Kingston Minute Company as a lieutenant under Captain Peleg Wadsworth, and marched to Boston. He remained in the Army for 10 years serving with the 23rd Continental Infantry and the 2nd and 3rd Massachusetts Lines and participated in battles at Ticonderoga, Trenton, Brandywine, and Monmouth. In 1777, he was promoted to captain and then to major in 1783.
Upon returning to Kingston at the end of the war, he resumed shipbuilding and in 1797 was appointed justice of the peace. Drew also served as Kingston's first postmaster, and represented the town multiple times in the Massachusetts General Court. He was appointed an agent and superintendent of fortifications in 1808, when the Army Corps of Engineers began rebuilding coastal defenses in anticipation of war with Great Britain. He was in charge of construction and management of the Plymouth, Massachusetts, harbor. Drew died in Kingston in 1824.