Once Upon a Time in ConnecticutNewton, Caroline Clifford
History
Once Upon a Time in Connecticut
Newton, Caroline Clifford
Connecticut -- History
And there, in London, a year later, Governor Hutchinson, of
Massachusetts, saw it at Lord Townshend's house in Portman
Square. Lady Townshend, he said, went to a sofa and uncovered a
large gilt head which her husband had received the night before
from New York, and which, although "the nose was wounded and
defaced," he at once recognized by its striking likeness to the
king. We do not know what became of it after this, or whether it
is still in existence.
There were one or two other pieces of this monument which also
had eventful histories. The slab, on which the horse had stood
with one foot in the air, was used as a gravestone for Major John
Smith, of the Forty-second, or Royal Highland, Regiment, who died
in 1783, and later it served for a time as a stepping-stone in
front of a well-known house in New Jersey.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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