03/07/2026
Love learning more about Marblehead!
MEET KEEPER #1 - BENAJAH WOLCOTT
Benajah was born a British subject in Danbury, Colony of Connecticut in 1762. At age 14 he enlisted and fought in the American Revolution for six years. He married Elizabeth Bradley when he was 31 and they had three children, Phoebe, Salima and William. When he was 44, he signed up to be a surveyor of the land that would be given to people from the state of Connecticut whose homes and farms were burned by the British during the war. This land in Ohio was called the Firelands and the people from Danbury Connecticut received land on the Marblehead Peninsula. Benajah liked the Peninsula so much that he bought land here and brought his family from back East. They built a log cabin and farmed until the start of War of 1812. The war caused unrest with the natives, so the Wolcotts fled to the Cleveland area for safety. His wife died before they could return to the Peninsula, but the rest of the family came back. Benajah’s daughters soon married and started families of their own.
Benajah spent time in the Sandusky area and met his second wife, Rachel Ogden. At age 60, Benajah got married, built a stone house (pictured) on what is now Bayshore Road, the first permanent house in Danbury Township, and got a job being the 1st keeper of the Marblehead Lighthouse. Two more children were born, Elizabeth and Henry. He served as a keeper for 10 years until he and his older son William caught cholera from infected bodies that had been tossed overboard from passing ships and washed up on the shore of the Peninsula. In 1832, Benajah and William died because of an act of kindness---giving the Cholera victims a decent burial.
