Wolcott History – Revolutionary War Service

When the Revolutionary War began Wolcott was not yet an incorporated town. However, the men of Farmingbury were nonetheless committed to helping in the fight against the British. The following men were included in the call of service in 1775 under the command of Captain John Alcox. This list is probably all men of eligible age in the town at the time.

Captain John Alcox

Daniel Alcox

David Alcox

David Alcox, Jr.

James Alcox

Samuel Atkins

Philip Barrett

Joseph Beecher

Joseph Benham

Philemon Bradley

John Bronson

Jacob Carter, Jr.

Johnson Cleaveland

Abel Collins,

Abel Curtiss, Sr.

John Greeley

Amos Hall

Curtiss Hall

Heman Hall

Jared Harrison

Mark Harrison

Samuel Harrison

Wait Hotchkiss

Aaron Howe

John Miles,

Stephen Miles, Jr.

Noah Neal

Isaac Newell

Cyrus Norton

Moses Pond
Jeremiah Selkrigs

Nathan Seward

Elkanah Smith

Jeremiah Smith

Nathaniel Sutliff

John Talmage

James Thomas

Abraham Tuttle

Dan Tuttle

Charles Upson

Ezekiel Upson

Aaron Welton

Eliakim Welton, Jr.

Abraham Wooster

There are a number of interesting things about this list of individuals which deserve some comment:

·         The prominence of the Alcox (later Alcott) family is quite obvious. But this is to be expected. Not only were they first settlers in town in 1731, but at this point they collectively owned 10% of the land in town. So it only makes sense that they also represent over 10% of the names in this list.

·         While many of these names have appeared before in my various Wolcott History blogs, there are other names from our history that do not yet appear here (such as Frisbie, Wakelee, etc.) But the town is still in its infancy and members of those families have not yet moved here.

·         This list is from a point little more than halfway from the first settlers (1731) and the town’s incorporation (1796). It is probably the only relatively complete list of families/inhabitants during this period and it shows how the town is starting to grow.

Roughly half of the above individuals are from families that I have already noted in previous blogs as being related to me. But there are also some family names that do not appear elsewhere in Wolcott history as they either died out or moved elsewhere before the town became more established. I did some preliminary checking on a few of them. There are probably a lot of interesting stories if one were to investigate further.

·         A few of the Cleaveland daughters married into other Wolcott families (Alcox and Welton above).

·         There was one Selkrigs family in the 1810 census in Wolcott, but by the 1820 census they had left.

·         The Sutliff family moved into the area around 1760, but moved to Wallingford around 1780.

So while this may be at first glance just a list of soldiers from our town’s history, there are so many different stories that can be told when you investigate further.