Education
He graduated from Yale College in 1738, a classmate of Phineas Lyman [q. v. ].
In March 1746 he married Mary, the daughter of Thomas Clap [q. v. ], the president of Yale College.
He graduated from Yale College in 1738, a classmate of Phineas Lyman [q. v. ].
In March 1746 he married Mary, the daughter of Thomas Clap [q. v. ], the president of Yale College.
He was at Louisburg in 1745 as a captain of Connecticut troops, and on July 4 he sailed for France with prisoners of war for exchange.
Capitalizing the excitement in London over Louisburg's surrender, he returned a captain in Sir William Pepperrell's new British regiment of foot.
There also, in 1750, he organized Hiram Lodge, one of the first lodges of Free Masons in the colony, of which he was first master.
He was at Ticonderoga in 1758 and with Amherst in later campaigns.
In 1757 he represented New Haven in the Assembly.
In April 1775 the Connecticut Assembly appointed him major-general of six regiments, and colonel of the 16t Regiment.
The next month, on the request of the New York council, he was ordered to New York, where throughout the summer he commanded Connecticut troops at Harlem and on Long Island.
He was present with Connecticut troops at Montgomery's siege and capture of St. Johns, and at Montreal.
"A general of a hayfield" (Smith, post, II, 230), dull and uninspired, garrulous about his thirty years of service, he showed incapacities that Silas Deane (Connecticut Historical Society Collections, II, 1870, 288) had suspected two years before, and with which Washington was in guarded agreement.
In April he assumed command of the forlorn American army before Quebec until superseded by Thomas.
The next month the congressional commissioners reported him totally unfit to command.
Reappointed major-general of Connecticut militia in the autumn of 1776, he served on the borders, mostly at Westchester, during the winter.
In a brief action on April 27, as he was rallying his men, he received a mortal wound.
He left two children.
The present monument at Danbury was set up in 1854 by the Masons.
[H. C. Deming, An Oration upon the Life and Services of Gen. David Wooster (1854); F. B. Dexter, Biog.
Sketches of the Grads.
of Yale College, vol.
I (1885); J. R. Case, An Account of Tryon's Raid on Danbury in April 1777 (1927); A. P. Stokes, Memorials of Eminent Yale Men (2 vols. , 1914); J. H. Smith, Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony (2 vols. , 1907), unsparing in criticism; some letters and papers in Lib.
of Cong. ]
He was not a success; he was tactless, hearty rather than firm with his undisciplined troops who adored him, at times brutal towards the civilian population of Montreal.
They had four children.
Wooster, David, (Mar. 2, 1711 - May 2, 1777), Connecticut 1711 1777 Male General Revolutionary brigadier-general, was born in the part of Stratford, Connecticut, that became Huntington, the seventh child of Mary (Walker) and Abraham Wooster, by trade a mason.
During Tryon's raid on Danbury in April 1777, with troops from New Haven, he stationed himself in the British rear at Ridgefield, while Arnold and Silliman attempted to intercept the enemy in front.
