Event Calendar

Date: Sunday, February 22, 2026

Time: 3:00 pm.

Location:  Litchfield Historical Society (7 South Street) 

Cost: Free (Suggested $5 donation)

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Oliver Wolcott Jr earned his reputation as one of Litchfield’s local legends. Wolcott was the nation’s second Treasury Secretary and a key figure on the national stage during the Federalist administrations of Presidents George Washington and John Adams, and was later elected Governor of Connecticut, serving for ten years. 

In this presentation Dr. John Lizzi will examine Wolcott’s contributions to both national and state government during his nearly forty years of public service, as well as discuss to what extent Wolcott evolved politically during his long career. Wolcott’s success can be attributed to his steadfast commitment to his principles including personal integrity, nationalism, the need for a strong national government, and the promotion of manufacturing and industry. 

Lizzi has taught social studies and history at Housatonic Valley Regional High School for the past fourteen years, and at present he lives in Burlington, Connecticut with his wife and two young children. Lizzi completed his doctoral dissertation on Oliver Wolcott Jr. last year, which served as the foundation of Connecticut Son, the first full-length biography of Wolcott's political career. This book will be available for purchase at the end of the talk. 

The lecture will be held at the Litchfield History Museum, 7 South St. Litchfield, CT. Please register in advance, as space is limited. The event is free, and donations are appreciated.

Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Time: 6:30 pm.

Location: Lecture will be held virtually on ZOOM

Cost: Free (Suggested $5 donation)

Registration Required 

On the night of July 9, 1776, a crowd emboldened by a public reading of the Declaration of Independence pulled a huge equestrian statue of George III from its pedestal at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. A British officer conveyed the decapitated head to London, intending to demonstrate the patriots’ defiance, and soldiers transported the remaining fragments to Litchfield, where the statue was melted down and recast as ammunition for Continental soldiers. En route, loyalists in Wilton absconded with pieces of the statue, concealing them in fields, swamps, and cellars. This talk revisits this dramatic episode of the American Revolution and explores its lesser-known afterlife in the twentieth century, when historical re-enactors in Litchfield, Wilton, and New York recreated the lost statue—only to destroy it all over again.

Wendy Bellion is Professor of Art History and Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art at the University of Delaware. Her scholarship focuses on the art and material culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Atlantic World and the early modern Americas. Her most recent publications include the books Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment (2019); Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion and Visual Perception in Early National America (2011), which was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s Eldredge Prize; and the co-edited volume Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century: Art, Mobility, and Change (2023). Her current research explores the women of the Peale family and the visual culture of theater in post-revolutionary Philadelphia.

 The lecture will be presented over Zoom and spots are limited. The event is free, and donations are appreciated.