In this handwritten receipt, Massachusetts soldiers Phineas Morgan and Palatiah Allen acknowledge receiving new French muskets and bayonets in exchange for their worn-out weapons while encamped on Van Schaick's Island in the Hudson River, several miles north of Albany. These arms may have been part of a shipment of 12,000 French muskets that had arrived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, earlier in the year. French supplies of arms, money, and eventually troops and ships proved vital in securing American independence.