‘A godsend’

Man who survived slavery, Civil War called this Middletown house ‘home’

MIDDLETOWN — The owner of the 18th-century Seth Wetmore House tells the story of an African-American Civil War veteran from Mississippi who, in 1865, showed up at the doorstep “battered and bruised,” and eventually came to run the family’s 1,200acre farm for more than 60 years.

George Washington eventually became so beloved that the Wetmore family buried him in their plot at Indian Hill Cemetery on Washington Street, according to current Wetmore House owner Jack Bolles, who bought the 23-room, circa-1746 home at 1066 Washington St. in 2007.

Washington, who was about 22 when he arrived, was born in the South, and came to Connecticut two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, according

to his obituary.

Once President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Washington essentially declared himself free, and left the plantation owned by James P. Clark of Mississippi, where he had lived and worked since a child, according Jack Bolles.

It was built by judge and businessman Seth Wetmore. The homestead came to be known as Oak Hill, Bolles said.

Soon after, Washington moved into a two-floor wing on the south side of the home, next to the main kitchen, now Bolles’ living room. The windows in the sitting room are the very same ones Miss Cornelia Wetmore looked out to see Washington sitting on her well 10 or so feet away.

Wetmore, who considered Washington a “godsend,” needed help running the farm because she was caring for aging parents, while also overseeing the land by herself. He came to know four generations of the family, Bolles said.

Washington traveled to Middletown to find a job after someone recommended he go there seeking work, Bolles said.

The history of the mansion, added to the National Register of Historic Places in September 1970, is “fascinating. It’s really mindblowing,” said Bolles, who has since made substantial renovations.

After he assumed ownership, a New Haven attorney contacted him, offering 24 cartons of memorabilia, which he picked up. They were the former property of Wesleyan professors Helen and Samuel Green, who rented and later owned the property in the mid-1950s, Bolles said.

Washington and his three brothers were sent to fight with the Mississippi Regiment with the Confederacy. He never learned what happened to his siblings, Bolles said.

“He was captured by the Yankees and they nearly worked him to death. He was often ragged, hungry and cold,” according to a 1941 account written by Carrie Brown Potter, Clark’s granddaughter.

Washington managed the Wetmore estate for six decades until the 1920s, according to Middlesex County Historical Society Executive Director Jesse Nasta, a history professor at Wesleyan.

In 2018, Dr. Barbara Hosien of Mississippi, the great-greatgranddaughter of Washington, called Debby Shapiro, who formerly led the historical society, asking whether anyone knew about the Wetmore House and Washington, Bolles said.

She and her sister, who were white, were blood relatives, Bolles said. They stopped by Bolles’ house. “They walked in, and … were mesmerized to think that George actually lived here,” he said. “Imagine — 150 years later

and his Southern family’s descendants would remember him,” Bolles wrote in a letter he included in one of his holiday cards. “It was a grand experience.”

It is important Washington not be remembered as an employee, Nasta said. “He was also one of the thousands of enslaved people who emancipated themselves during the Civil War by fleeing to the Union army lines. In doing so, George Washington made a courageous move to gain his own freedom, while also joining the thousands of enslaved people who pushed Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation,” he said.

“By refusing to stay put on plantations, they forced the U.S. government to embrace the abolition of slavery as a tactic to win the Civil War,” Nasta said.

Bolles also has the letter Washington wrote after 60 years away from his Mississippi home to the Clark family. “I have not forgotten any of them,” Washington wrote.

Washington died at the Soldier’s Home in Darien in February 1929 at about 86, Nasta said. He was uncertain of his exact birthday, because there was no record of his birth, his obituary said. He was laid to rest with full military honors and interred at Indian Hill Cemetery.

Day / Hearst Connecticut Media The circa 1746 Seth Wetmore House is located at 1066 Washington St. in Middletown.Cassandra

George Washington showed up injured at the Seth Wetmore home on Route 66, and came to run the 1,200-acre family farm. He’s shown here with Elizabeth Wells, who was brought up at the homestead.

Jesse Nasta / Contributed photo Shown in this circa 1915 photo are Middletown members of the Mansfield Post 53, the Grand Army of the Republic, a national organization for Civil War veterans of the Union Army. They are pictured in front of the Middlesex Mutual Assurance Company at 179 Main St., now Lastrina Girls Bridal Salon. George Washington, far right, back row, holds the American flag.

Cassandra Day / Hearst Connecticut Media Freed slave George Washington, who came to Middletown from Mississippi in his early 20s, turned up one day at the Seth Wetmore House on Route 66 in Middletown. In November 1865, Miss Cornelia Wetmore discovered him injured, sitting on the well in her front yard. She nursed him back to health.

Jesse Nasta / Contributed photo George Washington’s grave is located at Indian Hill Cemetery at 383 Washington St., Middletown. He is buried in the Wetmore family plot.