What was 20K Continental dollars worth in 1776?

I came across this AP story about some recently uncovered US revolutionary war documents. Among the items was an order to purchase:

This leads me to a few questions that I might have learned the answers to back in grade school, but WTF.

  1. Were Continental dollars a product of the revolution, or a prewar local currency that was also used by the British military?
  2. How much rum could they buy with it?
  3. How would Continentals rate againsy today’s dollar?

As an aside, I found this uncertainty over terms interesting:

If the term “money” is correct, it sounds like an order to buy every gallon of rum in the city on credit.

MY thought for the other term which would fit into that space well is “army”, or perhaps a smaller military unit name like “regiment”.

Sorry no cite, but I distinctly remember reading that Continental dollars were a form of paper currency issued by fiat. As is usually the case, they just printed more and more to finance the government and their value sank to pennies. This gave rise to the saying “not worth a Continental”.