Oliver Wolcott House: Litchfield's Founding Father
Connecticut
The house on South Street is the oldest surviving Georgian-style structure in Litchfield, built around seventeen fifty-three, and it was the home of one of the most active founders Connecticut produced.
Oliver Wolcott was born in Windsor in seventeen twenty-six and spent most of his adult life in this house. He studied at Yale, read law, and entered the colonial political world as a judge and county sheriff before the Revolution made larger demands on him. He served as a delegate to the Continental Congress from seventeen seventy-five through seventeen eighty-three, signing both the Declaration of Independence and, later, the Articles of Confederation. Connecticut had four signers of the Declaration; Wolcott was among them, representing a colony that was already deeply committed to the independence cause.
His service was not limited to deliberative chambers. When he returned home from Philadelphia in the summer of seventeen seventy-six, Wolcott organized and commanded a Connecticut militia brigade for the defense of New York. The following year he raised more volunteers and participated in the campaign against General Burgoyne that ended at Saratoga, one of the decisive engagements of the war. In seventeen seventy-nine he commanded Continental forces resisting the British invasion of Connecticut itself.
There is a detail from these years that Litchfield still tells: when the lead equestrian statue of King George the Third was pulled down in New York City in July of seventeen seventy-six, portions of it were carted to Wolcott's Litchfield property. There, local women and children reportedly melted down the royal lead and cast it into musket balls for the Continental Army. The story captures something of how total the war effort was in a town like this one.
Wolcott served as Governor of Connecticut from seventeen ninety-six until his death in seventeen ninety-seven. His son Oliver Wolcott Junior succeeded Alexander Hamilton as United States Secretary of the Treasury. The house, designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen seventy-one, remains a private residence today.
