Thomas Willett 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. The fourth son of English clergyman Andrew Willet, he was born in August 1605, in the rectory-house of Barley, Hertfordshire, and was baptised on the 29th of the same month. He was educated at The King's School, Ely. His father dying
Thomas Willett Sir Henry Vane the Elder; the Sir Henry Vanes, elder and younger, played major roles in England at the time of the English Civil War. The Brown(e) family also had ties to earliest Plymouth through the marriage of John Brown(e)'s son, James, to Lydia Howland, daughter of John Howland, one of the Mayflower passengers; Howland collaborated in Willett's early fur-trading efforts. Willett's son, Thomas Willett, was a major in the militia of Queens County and a councillor under Governors Sir Edmund Andros and Henry Sloughter. Mary Willett, eldest daughter of Capt. Thomas Willett and his wife Mary, married in 1658