-p. 79 - "In the summer of 1776, occurred the event, so dear to local tradition, when the leaden statue of George the third, torn from its gilded glory on Bowling Green, was brought to Litchfield and turned into rebel bullets by a few of the women and young people of the town. This was done, it is supposed, at the instance of Oliver Wolcott, who had just returned to Connecticut from Philadelphia, and was always keenly alive to the needs of the army. Among his papers was found the following account of the cartridges made on this occasion.
Mrs. Marvin, 3456 cartridges. Mrs. Marvin, on former account, 2602 Ruth Marvin on former account, 6204 Not sent to court house 449 packs, 5388 Laura, on former account, 4250 Not sent to court house 344 packs, 4128 Mary Ann, on former account, 5762 Not sent to the court house 119 packs, out of which I let Colonel Perley Howe have 3 packs, 5028 Frederick, on former account, 708 Not sent to court house, 19 packs, 228 Mrs. Beach's two accounts, 2002 Made by sundry persons, 2182 Gave Litchfield militia, on alarm, 50 Let the regiment of Col. Wigglesworth have, 300 Cartridges, No. 42,288 Overcharged in Mrs. Beach's account, 200 (total) 42,088
"Woodruff, p. 47, says of this, "the late Hon. Judge Wolcott, .... was a boy at the time, informed me a few years ago that he well remembered the circumstance of the statue being sent there, and that a shed was erected for the occasion in an apple orchard adjoining the house, where his father chopped it up with a wood axe, and the 'girls' had a frolic in running the bullets and making them up into cartidges..."
"The estimation in which lead was held in those days may be imagined from the fact that the above account of cartridges is filed carefully among returns of troops, accounts of requisitions upon the states, and issues of bills of credit."
"Oliver Wolcott, Sr., is best remembered for his role in a Litchfield historical episode which makes a very popular act in commemorative pageants. He was present and assumed custody of the remains when a mob of patriots in New York City pulled down a gilded lead statue of King George III. He caused this presumed work of art (minus the head, which loyalists rescued) to be transported by ox cart to the apple orchard behind his house in Litchfield. There he vigorously wielded an axe to dismember the carcass and engaged his children in what one of them described as the "frolic" of melting down the metal and casting it into bullets. With the aid of three ladies of the neighborhood, daughters Laura (age 15) and Mariann (age 11) and son Frederick (age 9) manufactured a total of 42,088 rounds (Laura 8,378, Mariann 10,790, Frederick 936) which the General duly turned over to the almost empty military supply depot, "melted majesty," people said, to be poured right back into the king's men."
"The Oliver Wolcott House....In the orchard to the rear, the leaden statue of King George III, torn down from Bowling Green in New York in 1776 and brought to Litchfield in a cart, was melted into bullets."
(Yes, I know, a Revolutionary War idea in a book about the Civil War, but, I guess they were proud.)
"Connecticut, with her practical turn of mind, made the equestrian statue of King George, in New York, useful to rebels against his authority. On the 11th of July, seven days after the declaration of the Continental Congress, this statue of gilded lead was visited by the Sons of Liberty, rudely toppled over, and hurried away the wondering Tories knew not whither. But any well-known patriot who visited the shed half hidden in the apple-orchard of Gen. Wolcott, in Litchfield, would have found his son Frederick chopping up the royal image with a hatchet into suitable lumps; and before the glowing coals in the huge kitchen fire-place, wife and daughter, with neighboring matrons and maids, fusing the lumps into bullets whith many a shrug and jest. It was so fitting that the hirelings of the kind should have "melted majesty fired at them''."