Mary Willett

Mary married Rev. Samuel Hooker on 22 Sep 1658 in Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts. Samuel (son of Rev. Thomas Hooker and Susannah Garbrand) was born about 1633; died on 6 Nov 1697 in Farmington, Hartford, Connecticut. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Mary Hooker was born on 3 Jul 1673; died on 1 Nov 1740 in New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 4 Aug 1674, Swansea, Bristol, Massachusetts

Notes:

Emigrated to New England in 1630. First at Penobscot, then Plymouth, Rehoboth, New York in 1665, and Swansea, Massachusetts in 1668. Called by Robert Charles Anderson "possibly" a son of Thomas and Alice Willett of Norwich and Leiden.

First and third mayor of New York City following its takeover by the English.

From Wikipedia:

Willett was placed in charge of the Plymouth Colony's trading post with the Native Americans at Castine in what is now Maine, and there developed the skills in trade and native language which would serve him well. The French forced Plymouth to abandon their operations at Castine in 1635.

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.

Accompanying the English commander Richard Nicolls, 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 (12 June 1665) and a commissioner of admiralty on August 23, with the approval of English and Dutch alike. 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, at the age of sixty-nine. He was buried in the Little Neck Cemetery at Bullock's Cove, Riverside area of East Providence, Rhode Island.

Thomas married Mary Brown on 6 Jul 1636 in Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts. Mary (daughter of John Browne and Dorothy) died on 6 Jan 1669 in Plymouth Colony; was buried in Little Neck Cemetery, East Riverside, East Providence, Providence, Rhode Island. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 8 Jan 1670

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1584
• Alternate death: 10 Apr 1662, Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts

Notes:

Arrived in New England in 1635 on the Elizabeth. First in Plymouth, then Taunton by 1643, Rehoboth by 1647. Back in England about 1656; returned to New England by 1660. He may have been a son of Thomas Browne and Ellen Fernyhoughe who married at St. Michael, Macclesfield, Cheshire, 6 Aug 1576. "It has been suggested that he was the John Browne licensed to marry at St. James Clerkenwell, London, 28 Dec. 1611, Dorothy Beauchamp." [Ancestral Lines, citation details below]

He was an educated man, prominent as a magistrate and merchant. Assistant in Plymouth Colony 1636-53; Commissioner for the United Colonies, 1644-56.

Ancestral Lines (citation details below) contains an extensive account of his life, including a number of connections between his family and that of the well-known gateway ancestor Alice Freeman.

From Ancestral Lines (citation details below):

He returned to England in 1655, to serve the Vane family as executor of the estate of the senior Sir Henry Vane, which included Raby Castle in Durham. Sir Henry Vane (born 1589, died 1655) had been Controller of the King's Household for King James I. His son had been in America from 6 Oct. 1635 to 3 Aug. 1637, served as Governor of Massachusetts Bay, and was imprisoned by Cromwell, England's dictator. While George F. Isham attributes John Browne's appointment to a relationship formed in New England, the son "Sir Harry" left Massachusetts long before John Browne and he had an opportunity to establish a bond.

On 23 Nov. 1655 he sold his property in Taunton, Mass. Bay, to "my cozens" John Tisdale and James Walker, whom he described as brothers-in-law. John Tisdale's youngest daughter became a ward of James Browne in 1675.

In 1655 John Browne stayed with the Wray family at Belleau, the Lincolnshire home of Frances Vane, a daughter of Sir Christopher Wray and the wife of Sir Harry Vane (who was born 1613, and executed 14 June 1662, son of Sir Henry Vane) not far from Boston, where Roger Williams had also stayed. While Mr. Browne was at Belleau in 1657 George Fox came for a visit, and mentioned in his diary meeting a "New England magistrate". In 1627 Sir John Wray had been in Gatehouse Prison for failure to collect the ship loan of Charles I. John Browne of Sutterton, a village just south of Boston in Lincolnshire, was among those failing to pay the tax. William Coddington, who also resisted the tax, came to America with the Rev. John Cotton of St. Botolph's church in Boston, was a relative of Edmund Freeman of Sandwich.

Upon the Restoration in 1660, when Charles II returned to the throne, Mr. Browne sailed to his home in Wannamoisett.

John married Dorothy before 1616. Dorothy died on 27 Jan 1674 in Swansea, Bristol, Massachusetts; was buried on 29 Jan 1674 in Swansea, Bristol, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]