David Wooster - Memorials

Memorials

On June 17, 1777, Congress voted that a suitable monument should be erected in his memory, but measures were never inaugurated to execute the resolution. His grave was not identified until 1854, when Connecticut legislature laid the cornerstone of a monument. A sign and a monument on Route 116 (North Salem Road) just a few yards away from the intersection with Tackora Trail, marks the spot where General David Wooster fell, during the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777. Today, a monument 30 feet (9.1 m) high marks his final resting place. General Wooster is buried in the Wooster cemetery on Mount Moriah, which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. Wooster's monument is surrounded by a stone and iron railing. The monument is heavily carved with a variety of military and Masonic symbols, as well as classical Greek motifs. Among extensive information carved into the monument is this quote, "Of his country Wooster said, 'my life has ever been devoted to her services from my youth up, though never before in a cause like this—a cause for which I would most cheerfully risk and lay down my life'."

In the 1820s, the city of New Haven converted a small pasture into a public square and named it Wooster Square after Wooster. Today, the entire neighborhood, as well as several streets, all carry Wooster's name. The neighborhood was the center of large-scale Italian immigration to the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and still retains a large Italian presence today.

Wooster School, a private day school, Wooster Mountain State Park and numerous streets are named after Wooster in Danbury, Bethel, and Ridgefield, as well as David Wooster Middle School, a public school in Stratford, Connecticut, a street in New York City, and the city of Wooster, Ohio (which houses the College of Wooster and the appropriately named Wooster High School Generals).

Ben Douglass, in his 1878 history of Wayne County, Ohio, characterized Wooster as "a man of prepossessing appearance, of rare intellectual culture and accomplished education."