Thomas Willett 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 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
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