A scholar who studied the commerce of the Connecticut River Valley concluded Wadsworth alone rivaled competitors in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In their respective spheres, both Wadsworth and Sherman achieved a prominence that put them in the league of men historians once called great. Sherman was there in 1774 when the colonies formally allied themselves against British power, there in 1776 for the Declaration of Independence and there again in 1781 for the Articles of Confederation. He was the only one who also had signed the other great documents that led to nationhood. ![]() ![]() When he signed the new Constitution, he earned a unique distinction among the founding fathers. He was a dominant figure in the old Continental Congress and again at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. After the war he would become a founder of Hartford's first bank, as well as its insurance and textile industries. ![]() Before the war ended, he'd become the largest initial investor in the nation's first bank, the Bank of North America. When he died in 1804, he left an estate so large - the then enormous sum of $125,000 - that it allowed his son, Daniel, to become the city's first philanthropist and endow the art museum that still bears the family name.ĭuring the Revolution, Wadsworth as commissary general fed and supplied Washington's army and then the 20,000-man French army that was its ally. In the years during and after the American Revolution, the two most powerful men in Connecticut may have been Jeremiah Wadsworth of Hartford and Roger Sherman of New Haven.
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