Willett, Thomas, 1605-1674

LC control no.	n 2020182749
Descriptive conventions	rda
Personal name heading	Willett, Thomas, 1605-1674 *Browse this term in* LC Authorities or the LC Catalog
Located	Plymouth (Mass.)
Birth date	1605-08-29
Death date	1674-08-04
Place of birth	Barley (Hertfordshire, England)
Place of death	Swansea (Mass.)
Profession or occupation	Merchants Indian traders Ship captains Mayors
Found in	The first mayor of New York City, Thomas Willett, 1887?: p. 240 (1674 Here lyeth the body of the worthy Thomas Willett, Esq. who died August 4 in the 64th year of his age, and who was the first mayor of New York and twice did sustain the place) Mary Browne, 1935: title page (the true life and times of the daughter of Mr. John Browne, gent., commissioner of the United Colonies of New England, the wife of the worshipful Thomas Willett, merchant, captain and governor's assistant of New Plymouth, first English mayor of New York; strung together from histories and records by Elizabeth Nicholson White) Wikipedia, June 12, 2020 (Thomas Willett; Thomas Willett (1605 - August 29, 1674) was a British merchant, Plymouth Colony trader and sea-captain, Commissioner of New Netherland, magistrate of Plymouth Colony, Captain of the Plymouth Colony militia and was the 1st and 3rd Mayor of New York City, prior to the consolidation of the five boroughs into the City of New York in 1898; son of English clergyman Andrew Willet, he was born in August 1605, in the rectory-house of Barley, Hertfordshire; shortly after he came of age, he went to Leyden, and then in 1629 to the new Plymouth Colony where he gained the trust of Governor William Bradford; Willett was placed in charge of the Plymouth Colony's trading post with the Native Americans at Castine in what is now Maine; Willett married Mary, daughter of John Brown(e), Sr., a leading citizen of the Plymouth Colony; he moved with the Brown(e) family from Plymouth westward to the eastern shores of Narragansett Bay to Wannamoisett, near present-day Barrington, Rhode Island, and became a major merchant, trading with New Amsterdam; he was elected one of the assistant governors of the Plymouth Colony, and acted as arbitrator in disputes between the English and Dutch colonies; he eventually became the Plymouth Colony's chief military officer; he contributed to the peaceable surrender of New Amsterdam to the English on September 7, 1664; when the colony received the name of New York, Willett was appointed the first mayor (June 12, 1665) and a commissioner of admiralty; the next year he was elected alderman, and became mayor a second time in 1667; shortly after he withdrew to Swansea, and here, after having lost his first wife, he married Joanna Boyse, the widow of clergyman, Reverend Peter Prudden; he was a member of the New York governor's executive council from 1665 to 1672 under Richard Lovelace; he retired in 1673, and died in 1674 in Swansea, Plymouth Colony (now approximately Bristol, Rhode Island)) findagrave.com, June 12, 2020 (Thomas Willett, Sr.; born 29 August 1605 in Hertfordshire, England; died 4 August 1674 in Swansea, Bristol County, Massachusetts; colonial mayor; first Mayor of New York City; arriving in 1632 on "The Lion" (with a religious separatist movement that called themselves "The Saints", that fled England to Leydon, Holland then went back to England to follow the Mayflower voyage), Thomas Willett was a merchant that traded from Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts; he succeeded Captain Miles Standish as head of the Colonial Militia and negotiated what is now known as the Rehoboth North Purchase; he later conducted sea trade from the Colonies and was a navigator from 1651 to 1654; when the charter of "New Amsterdam" was changed to British possession, Governor Richard Nicholls granted the city charter on June 12, 1665 and the city, population 1,500 at the time, got Thomas Willett as its English representative/mayor, making him the first mayor of New York; he served two concurrent one-year terms from 1665 to 1667; his property in that colony was confiscated when the Dutch reclaimed the area and he settled in the locale of Barrington, Rhode Island (while some accounts have his retirement in Sewansea or Seekoknk, Massachusetts, these towns are all close and at the time the town lines that currently exist were not the same); he was married to Mary Brown and together they had fourteen children; there is a large memorial marker placed for him, and near it is the original weathered stone which, now unreadable is documented as having the following inscription "1674 Here lyeth the body of the worthy Thomas Willett, Esq. who died August 4 in the 64th year of his age, and who was the first mayor of New York and twice did sustain the place")