Moses Dunbar

Moses Dunbar (c. 1746) was the one of the few men in the state of Connecticut to be convicted of high treason and executed. (William Stone of Stamford and Robert Thomson of Newton were two others; they each also were hanged in 1777.) Born in Wallingford, Connecticut, Moses and his father moved to Plymouth, CT. Moses married Pheobe Jerome of Bristol, CT. In 1776, shortly before The Declaration of Independence was signed, his wife Phoebe died, so he later married Esther Adams. He was imprisoned under suspicion of disloyalty for some two weeks, he escaped and fled to Long Island, where he enlisted in the king's army and received commission as Captain. He then came back to Bristol, CT and was trying to persuade some other young men to enlist in the King's Army when he was arrested, and his royal commission was found in his pocket. He was indicted for high treason, tried in the superior court in Hartford, Connecticut on January 23, 1777, found guilty and executed on the gallows which stood near the present site of Trinity College (Connecticut). According to records, Dunbar's own father offered the rope for the noose. Dunbar was a member of the Episcopal Church, and is interred at the Ancient Burying ground, in Hartford.