Francis DeWitt

Mr. Francis DeWitt as a Young Man

Francis was born in Granby, MA on March 12, 1813 to John and Lucretia (Towne) Witt. He was the eldest of their eight children.

In 1835 he married Catharine “Kate” Granger in Enfield, CT. It was around that time that he and many of his family members changed their last name from “Witt” to “DeWitt” by an act of the legislature. Francis and Kate had eight children, four of whom lived into adulthood.

Mr. Dewitt was very active in politics, serving as the Town Registrar for Ware, MA, a State Congressman, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a trial judge. He was a member of several different political parties during his tenure. Mr. DeWitt was also a very successful lumber and wooden furniture merchant, owned a hardware and paint store, and traveled frequently.

Brevet Major Francis DeWitt

During the US Civil War he served as a Captain in the US Volunteers Commissary Department Infantry from 1862-1866. He and several others were court martialed on charges of embezzlement and fraud, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. For a brief time he was held in Libby Prison. He was breveted to Major in 1866, and discharged shortly after.

Mr. Dewitt was a member first of the Bethel Lodge of Masons in Enfield, MA, joining in 1862. Shortly before his death he joined the Quaboag Lodge in Warren, MA.

He died in White Oak District, NC on September 13, 1868 following a boiler explosion in one of his lumber mills. Mr. DeWitt's brother Masons held his funeral in North Carolina, and his gravestone in Walnut Grove Cemetery in Ware is a cenotaph.