Nearly one hundred years after the Declaration of Independence the tail of King George’s horse was dug up on a farm in Wilton, Connecticut, and a piece of his saddle was found there at about the same time. The tradition in Wilton is that the ox-cart carrying the broken statue passed through Wilton on its way to Litchfield, and that the saddle and the tail were thrown away there. Just why, no one knows; perhaps the load was too heavy; possibly—­some people think—­because it was found that they were not of pure lead and could not be used to make bullets. Most of the statue, however, seems to have reached Litchfield safely.

On the beautiful broad South Street of that village, high in the Connecticut hills, the house of General Wolcott, afterwards Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, still stands under its old trees much as it stood in the summer of 1776.

When the pieces of the leaden statue reached Litchfield, they were buried temporarily in the “Wolcott orchard under an apple tree of the Pound variety” that stood near the southeast corner of the house. And then, sometime later, there came a day when King George, who had once sat so securely on his solid steed, close to his fort in his good city of New York, was taken out of this last hiding-place and, together with his leaden horse, was melted down and run into bullets to be fired at his own soldiers.

Bullet-moulds of the time of the Revolution can be seen now in historical museums. Some of them are shaped like a large pair of shears. The work of running the bullets that day in Litchfield was done by women and girls, for the men were away at the war. The only man who took part in it, besides the general himself, was Frederick, his ten-year-old son, and he, many years later, told how he remembered the event, how a shed was built in the orchard, how his father chopped up the fragments of the statue with a wood-axe, how gay the girls were, his two sisters a little older than himself and their friends, and what fun they all had over the whole affair. A ladle, said to have been used in pouring the lead into the moulds, is still kept in the Historical Museum at Litchfield, and among Governor Wolcott’s papers is a memorandum labeled, “Number of cartridges made.”

Cartridges
Mrs. Marvin,6,058
Ruth Marvin,11,592
Laura,8,378
Mary Ann,10,790
Frederick,936
Mrs. Beach,1,802
Made by sundry persons, 2,182
Gave Litchfield militia on alarm, 50
Let the Regiment of Colonel Wigglesworth have, 300
------
42,088

Mary Ann and Laura were Frederick’s sisters, twelve and fourteen years old. Some of the bullets made, and which were given to the “Litchfield militia on alarm,” were probably used the next year to repulse a British invasion of Connecticut, so that it was said then that “His Majesty’s statue was returned to His Majesty’s troops with the compliments of the men of Connecticut.”

References

  1. Proceedings of the New York Historical Society. October, 1844.
  2. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 2d Series, vol. 4.
  3. Montresor, Captain John. “Journals.” Collections of the New York Historical Society for the year 1881. Printed by the Society.
  4. Kilbourne, Payne Kenyon. Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield, Conn. Case, Lockwood & Co. Hartford, 1859.
  5. Wokott Memorial.

[Newgate Prison]

“Attend all ye villains that live in the state,
Consider the walls that encircle Newgate.”