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 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. In his religious views, Willett was an independent. Willett was connected by marriage to the family of John Brown(e), shipbuilder, perennial political office holder, founder of several towns, and one of the wealthiest men in the Plymouth Colony. Although Brown(e)'s origins are uncertain and subject to present debate, he evidently was very well connected in England, as near the end of his life he returned there for several years as executor of the estate of