Wolcott, Oliver

Oliver Wolcott was born April 7, 1891, to Roger Wolcott (39^th Governor of Massachusetts) and Edith Baker Prescott.  He graduated from Harvard University (Class of 1913) and Harvard Law School (Class of 1915).  From February to July 1916 he served as a Sous-Chef (assistant leader) of Section Sanitaire [Etats-] Unis (SSU) 2 of the American Field Service (AFS), a volunteer ambulance organization serving with the French Army in World War I.   

SSU 2 was stationed on the Verdun front in France, which became the longest and one of the most devastating battles of the war.  Wolcott was then called to the Mexican border, as a Lieutenant of Troop B of the Massachusetts National Guard.  When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, Wolcott returned to France as Captain of Troop B, now called the Headquarters Troop of the 26^th Infantry Division (Yankee Division), and as an aide-de-camp to Major General Clarence R. Edwards.
War service was a family affair -- Wolcott’s mother, Edith Prescott, was a YMCA canteen worker in France from November 1917 to February 1919.

Sybil Appleton was born December 28, 1899, to Randolph Appleton and Helen Winter.  From March to August 1921, she and her mother went to France as volunteers with the American Committee for Devastated France, an organization incorporated in March 1918 and headed by Anne Morgan (1873-1952) and Anne Murray Dike (1879-1929), which provided emergency relief and restoration aid to the citizens of the Aisne region of France after World War I.

The American Committee for Devastated France was known in France as the Comité Américain pour les Régions Dévastées (CARD).  It was staffed by American women, many of them professionals and doctors who lived in barracks and worked long hours.  The organization raised close to five million dollars and spearheaded a wide variety of restoration projects in France before disbanding in 1926. It was headquartered in the seventeenth-century Château de Blérancourt, which Anne Morgan purchased and later donated to the town to be re-purposed as the Musée Franco-Américain du Château de Blérancourt (Franco-American Museum at the Château de Blérancourt).

Oliver Wolcott and Sybil Appleton met after Appleton returned from France.  They were married in December 1922, and it is likely that Appleton continued to use her maiden name.  Wolcott worked as an attorney.  The couple had three children, Helen (born 1923), Augusta (born 1926), and Oliver (born 1930.)  Wolcott continued his affiliation with AFS, serving on their board when the ambulance service was reactivated during World War II.

Oliver Wolcott passed away March 11, 1967.  Sybil Appleton passed away December 15, 1973.

[Bio courtesy of AFS Archives, New York]