Oliver Wolcott: The Signer Nobody Can Date

Four primary documents from the Connecticut leader who missed the vote he had argued for, defended New York with fourteen militia regiments, signed the Declaration on his return that fall, melted a royal statue into musket balls, and died as governor.

Oliver Wolcott was born November 20, 1726 in Windsor, Connecticut, the fourteenth child of Roger Wolcott, governor of Connecticut. He graduated from Yale in 1747, studied medicine briefly, then turned to law and politics. He was sheriff of Litchfield County from 1751 to 1771 and served in the Connecticut colonial assembly. By 1775 he was one of Connecticut's most trusted public officials.

Elected to the Continental Congress in 1775, Wolcott argued for independence through the spring of 1776. Illness forced him out of Philadelphia at the end of June, days before the vote of July 2. William Williams was sent to take his seat and signed the Declaration in his place. Wolcott recovered, commanded fourteen regiments of Connecticut militia in the defense of New York that August, and returned to Congress in the fall of 1776, where he added his signature to the engrossed parchment. The record preserves no date for it. Most accounts place it in September or October.

When British forces approached New York in 1776, a statue of King George III in Bowling Green was pulled down by a Patriot crowd. Wolcott arranged for the lead from the statue to be transported to Litchfield, where it was melted and cast into musket balls. His family and neighbors reportedly made 42,088 musket balls from the statue. The lead was distributed to the Continental forces.

Wolcott then served in the field during the Saratoga campaign of 1777, commanding Connecticut militia forces. He was present during the campaign that culminated in Burgoyne's surrender in October 1777. His Saratoga service is documented in the Letters of Delegates to Congress and the Founders Online correspondence.

After the Revolution, Wolcott was appointed to the Connecticut bench of the Superior Court of Errors in 1784. He served as lieutenant governor from 1787 to 1796. When Governor Samuel Huntington died in 1796, Wolcott succeeded him as governor of Connecticut. He served until his own death the following year, on December 1, 1797, at seventy-one. He was buried in the East Cemetery in Litchfield, Connecticut.

His papers are at the Connecticut Historical Society. His congressional correspondence is in the Letters of Delegates to Congress at the Library of Congress.