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 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