Elizabeth was born December 15, 1821 in Wetumpka, Cossa/Elmore County, Alabama. She married William Henry Wolcott on February 10, 1839, in Wetumpka, Cossa/Elmore County, Alabama. Elizabeth is listed in the 1860, Smith County, Texas census. In the 1870 census, she is listed as the wife of A. A. Hendricks. She died on November 8, 1878, and is buried next to her second husband, Adam Admire Hendricks, in Little Bethel Cemetery, Pioneer section, Duncanville, Texas.
Nathaniel Wolcott who was born in Brookfield, Massachusetts in 1764 and married Elizabeth Pease of Spencer, Massachusetts in 1787. They later moved to Delaware County, New York in the late 1790's, and settled a farm on Ouleout Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River near Sidney, New York. It was at this farm presumably that William Henry Wolcott was born in 1800. The Pease name was helpful in making the connection in that it was the middle name that William Henry gave his youngest born son, Oliver Pease Wolcott (1857-1916). Death records for Nathaniel Wolcott referenced his son, William Wolcott, who had "relocated to another part of the United States" [presumably Alabama] where William Henry was living in 1847 when Nathaniel Wolcott died at Sidney, New York).
We still have many unresolved questions regarding William Henry Wolcott, including particularly why he would have left his family in New York to cross the cultural divide to move south during the 1830's to Wetumpka, Alabama, where he married Elizabeth Ann Galagher in 1839. It may be that he had received some sort of land-grant in the South for military service. Or it may be that he was seeking opportunity in the strong cotton-economy of the South following the introduction of cotton-gin.
Another question has to do with his profession as a teacher. For my part, I now discount the reference in the Frank Johnson book about William Henry being educated in the schools of New York City. As far as I can tell, he came from a family of limited means farming a modest piece of land in upstate New York. I have never found any record of William Henry having been in New York City, which, of course, does not prove that he was never there. It just seems unlikely that his family would have had the resources to send him for schooling to the big city. From the history I have read, it seems that many men turned to teaching (or some other non-physical employment, such as pastoring) after they had become too old for physical labor, or perhaps had become injured in a earlier occupation. It may have been that William Henry had just enough schooling from upstate New York that he was able to keep himself employed as a school-teacher in rural parts of Alabama and then Texas.
A final unresolved question has to do with William Henry's burial site. From the Frank Johnson book, we have the statement that William Henry died in 1860 near Tyler, Smith Co., Texas. From the 1860 census for Smith Co. (which was taken in September of that year and does not include William Henry), the record for "Eliza Walcot" indicates that she was living in the small community of New Harmony, Texas, which is about seven miles north-west of Tyler. There is a cemetery in New Harmony, but the earliest carved headstones are from 1862. The cemetery does include, however, a number of iron-ore slabs, presumably marking early graves. I spoke with a historian for Smith Co., Texas, and she told me that in the early days, before the arrival of stonemasons in the area, many early graves were marked with iron ore, which is readily available in the area (I had forgotten that one of the armories for the Confederacy was located in Tyler, Texas, because of the local availability of iron ore and coal). Here is a photo of some of these graves marked with iron ore, one of which, I believe, likely marks the gravesite for William Henry Wolcott. (from Charles Wolcott)
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