General David Wooster

David Wooster, Revolutionary War General, though woefully understudied, was one of the most influential figures in Colonial Connecticut. A study of his life is a study of the major events that shaped New England. The growth of his military leadership from the 1740s until his death in 1777, was coupled with active civic responsibility and entrepreneurial spirit. While raising a family in New Haven, Wooster sought active involvement in colonial politics and, at the same time, supported and encouraged New Haven’s growing influence as a major port city. Tremendously devoted to the ideas of liberty, freedom, equality and the rights to property, David Wooster epitomized the 18th century American republican cause—a cause for which he sacrificed everything to defend and help secure.
At the point in life when most people reached the age of retirement, as well as the ease of old age, Wooster, sixty-five years old at the outset of the Revolutionary War, once more donned the uniform of his home colony of Connecticut, and led troops in the field of battle. He had everything to lose, and nothing but liberty and freedom to gain. To him, however, these were more than ample reasons. This first biography of the influential figure is exhaustively researched from primary sources, covering Wooster’s entire life and entire military and civic careers.

Jason Edwin Anderson has taught high school history, government, museum studies, and archaeology for the past 24 years at Archbishop Hoban High School in Akron, Ohio. He lives in Wooster, Ohio.

Jason Edwin Anderson
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: 9 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9575-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5481-2
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
1. David Wooster’s Early Years (1710–1738) 7
2. First Military Action (1739–1746): The War of the
Austrian Succession and the Siege of Louisbourg 13
3. Civilian Life (1747–1753) 26
4. The French and Indian War (1753–1764) 35
5. The Brewing Storm (1763–1774) 54
6. Wooster’s Involvement in the Revolutionary War 1775 78
7. 1776 108
8. 1777 136
9. Wooster’s Legacy 148
Appendix I. Historiographic Essay on Eighteenth-Century
Colonial Connecticut 159
Appendix II. “On the Death of General Wooster”: A Poem
by Phillis Wheatley, July 1778 169
Appendix III. Excerpts from the Connecticut Journal
on the Death of Wooster 171
Chapter Notes 173
Bibliography 207
Index 219