History of Swansea, Massachusetts, 1667-1917; - citizen hylbom blog

PERSONAL SKETCHES
Thomas Willet
This worthy leader was probably grandson of Thomas' Will^.^canon
of Ely, and was son of Dr. Aidrew Willet, that rector of Barley who was
imprisoned for preaching against the proposed "Spanish match" of
Charles I. Young Thomas was reared in HoUand, and on reaching Plymouth
in 1630, at the age of twenty, was nearly as Dutch as English in
language, habits, and sympathies. His exciting experience in the Castine
affair ended in 1635 (See pp. 387-8); in 1636 he married John Brown's
daughter Mary; he was for a time employed in the Colony's Kennebec
trade, but soon engaged in trafiSc with the Manhattan Dutch, whose confidence
he won in a high degree.
In 1651, Assistant CoUier dying, Willet was chosen in his stead; he
continued to hold the place for fourteen years, and was succeeded by James
Brown. In 1648, as leader of the Plymouth train-band, he had acquired
the title of captain. During these years he joined the Browns at Wanamoiset.
In 1664, when he was taken to New York in the train of the King's
Commissioners, the Dutch residents urged that if they must be placed
under English rule, WiUet would be especially acceptable from his knowledge
of their usages, tastes, and language. The Commissioners therefore
appointed Captain Willet as the first mayor of the city of New York.
The place had hitherto been ruled by a trading-company, and was small;
but already it was acquiring a metropolitan character, for even then in its
streets the new mayor heard eighteen different languages. How long
Willet filled this post, or when he took it for a second term, is uncertain.
In 1667 he was one of the active corporators at Swansea, to which Wanamoiset
was transferred from Rehoboth. In the interesting proceedings
of the next seven years, by which that town was developed as a Baptist
community with Congregational support, Willet took a hberal and leading
part as a representative of the latter element. Yet he appears to have been
at the head of affairs in New York when, in 1673, Evertsen recaptured it for
the Dutch. Willet then came home to Swansea, and there died in 1674,
aged sixty-four. His first wife died in 1669, also aged sixty-four. Their
grave-stones are standing at Bullock's Cove, Riverside, but that of the
"vertvovs" matron blunderingly records her death as in 1699,—which
would make her but two years old at her marriage.
Of Willet's children, the youngest, Hezekiah, was a pubhc favorite.
At the age of twenty, a few months after his marriage to Andia Bourne,
during Philip's War, while there was no thought of danger, he had passed
but a short distance beyond his door in Swansea, when some prowling
Indians killed him with three bullets and carried away his head. This act
exasperated the whole Colony, the more especially from the uniform kindness
of the Willet family to the Indians. In all offers of pardon and amnesty
these assassins were excepted; and when Crossman, their leader, was
taken,^ he was hanged. Even the hostile Wampanoags lamented young
Willet's death, and when the head was recovered, it was found that they
had tenderly combed the hair and decorated it with beads.
A century after this incident the country was called to another war