For other men with this name, see Roger Wolcott (disambiguation).

Roger Wolcott (January 4, 1679 – May 17, 1767) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 weaver and statesman from Windsor, Connecticut

Windsor, Connecticut

Windsor is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, and was the first English settlement in the state. It lies on the northern border of Connecticut's capital, Hartford. The population was estimated at 28,778 in 2005....

. He served as colonial governor of Connecticut

Connecticut Colony

The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut was an English colony located in British America that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, it was organized on March 3, 1636 as a haven for Puritan noblemen. After early struggles with the Dutch, the English...

 from 1751 to 1754.

Roger was born to Simon and Martha (Pitkin) Wolcott in Windsor, Connecticut. His formal education was severely limited by the nature of the frontier village, so at age twelve he was apprenticed to a weaver, and later entered that business on his own.

In 1711, during Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War , as the North American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession was known in the British colonies, was the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought between France and England, later Great Britain, in North America for control of the continent. The War of the...

, Wolcott accompanied militia forces on an expedition

Quebec Expedition

The Quebec Expedition, or the Walker Expedition to Quebec, was a British attempt to attack Quebec in 1711 in Queen Anne's War, the North American theatre of the War of Spanish Succession...

 to Quebec

Quebec City

Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

 as a commissary. On his return he was elected to the colony's Lower House. In 1714 he was elected to the Upper House (also called the Council) and remained a member until 1750. He was made judge of the Hartford County

Hartford County, Connecticut

Hartford County is a county located in the north central part of the US state of Connecticut. The 2010 Census records show that the county population is at 894,014 making it the second most populated county in Connecticut....

 court in 1721 and of the colony's supreme court in 1732. In 1741 Wolcott was elected Deputy Governor of the colony. As deputy governors traditionally served as the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut, he also assumed that position, which he held until 1750.

In 1745 Wolcott was again active in the militia, this time as a Major General. In King George's War

King George's War

King George's War is the name given to the operations in North America that formed part of the War of the Austrian Succession . It was the third of the four French and Indian Wars. It took place primarily in the British provinces of New York, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia...

, Massachusetts governor William Shirley

William Shirley

William Shirley was a British colonial administrator who served twice as Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and as Governor of the Bahamas in the 1760s...

 issued a general call to the New England colonies for an expedition against the French in Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America. It likely corresponds to the word Breton, the French demonym for Brittany....

). General Wolcott headed the Connecticut troops in Sir William Pepperrell's

William Pepperrell

Sir William Pepperrell, 1st Baronet was a merchant and soldier in Colonial Massachusetts. He is widely remembered for organizing, financing, and leading the 1745 expedition that captured the French garrison at Fortress Louisbourg during King George's War...

 expedition

Siege of Louisbourg (1745)

The Siege of Louisbourg took place in 1745 when a New England colonial force aided by a British fleet captured Louisbourg, the capital of the French province of Île-Royale during the War of the Austrian Succession, known as King George's War in the British colonies.Although the Fortress of...

 that captured Fortress Louisbourg.

With the death of Governor Jonathan Law

Jonathan Law

Jonathan Law was the 27th Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, serving in that office from 1741 until 1750. His term followed that of Joseph Talcott, governor from 1724 until 1741, and preceded that of Roger Wolcott, governor from 1750 until 1754.Law was born in Milford in what was then...

 in 1750, Wolcott succeeded to the position of governor. He was re-elected annually to that position through 1753. Shortly after he retired as governor, his son, Roger Wolcott, Jr., attended negotiations with six other British colonies and around 200 members of various Indian nations at the Albany Congress

Albany Congress

The Albany Congress, also known as the Albany Conference and "The Conference of Albany" or "The Conference in Albany", was a meeting of representatives from seven of the thirteen British North American colonies in 1754...

 in June and July of 1754. During Wolcott's administration, a disabled Spanish ship, the St. Joseph and St. Helena, with a cargo valued at 400,000 Spanish dollars, ran aground near New London. Wolcott ordered the ship seized and the cargo impounded in order to allow time to resolve conflicting claims between the vessel's captain and the salvage crew. While in the colony's custody, a large portion of the ship's cargo mysteriously disappeared. Tainted with the scandal surrounding the Spanish Ship case, Wolcott was defeated for re-election in 1754. Following his defeat, Wolcott generally withdrew from public life to study and follow literary pursuits. In 1759, Wolcott authored a short history of the Connecticut colony titled, Roger Wolcott's Memoir Relating to the History of Connecticut.

Wolcott married Sarah Drake in 1702, and they had fourteen children before her death in 1748. Their son Oliver Wolcott signed the Declaration of Independence

United States Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...

and went on to become governor of Connecticut. Wolcott died at home in Windsor and is buried in the Old Burying Ground there.