patriot forces and served until the end of the war. He achieved the rank of Sergeant and was a body-guard of General LaFayette. He was wounded at Yorktown. He returned home and became a blacksmith.
    DeWolfe spent his boyhood in Morris and received a very limited education in the common schools of that community. He was put to work at an early age in his father's shop. He is said to have been a prodigy of sorts, and at the age of 14 years built a lathe without having a pattern to copy after. He became known for his skill at repairing guns, watches and other mechanical items. When he was not yet 16, he built clock manufacturing equipment which later turned out 5,000 clocks per year. He worked in the making of wooden clocks with Eli and Henry Terry.
    When he reached the age of majority, he went into business, planning to set up street lamps in Havana, Cuba. But the ship experienced bad weather and finally landed at Charleston harbor. There DeWolfe and his associate changed their plans and set up a gun shop in Georgetown, South Carolina. He later went to New York to work for instrument makers.
    He suffered a decline in health and an extended sea voyage was recommended for him. DeWolfe and a companion joined a whaling expedition and spent three years, three months and twenty days on the whaling ship, where he served as the blacksmith on the vessel. He returned to shore in sound health.
    He returned to Connecticut and built machinery for Seth Thomas, who manufactured brass clocks. In 1846 he went to Springfield and the Wasson Car Works.
    In 1850 he went to Harlem and began making rubber making machinery. He devised a method to shape hard rubber goods out of rubber dust, scraps, or plates. He made the machinery for the Novelty Rubber Company which manufactured rubber buttons in Beacon Falls in 1855. The company later moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey.
    About 1860 he began experimenting with insulation of wire. The Day factories in Seymour were burnt in 1864 and rebuilt with equipment which was constructed by DeWolfe. This included machinery to properly cover wire so to be perfectly insulated, with Kerite, a chemical used there starting in 1866.