Talk:Thomas Willett

Background, footnotes, etc.
This is a potentially neat entry, but is slapdash as now written. It needs footnotes, clarifications and additions. I hope to get to it at some point, and I also hope others will take an interest in this first mayor of New York City, who was formerly a Puritan merchant. MarmadukePercy (talk) 05:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Correction for Second Spouse of Thomas Willett
This article states that “... after [Thomas Willett] lost his first wife, he married the widow of a clergyman named John Pruden.” Thomas Willet actually re-married, as his second spouse, the widow of the Reverend Peter Prudden of Milford, Connecticut, Joanna (Boyse) Prudden. Peter and Joanna Prudden had a son, John Prudden, who may have been the "John Pruden" referred to in this article.

SOURCES:

1. Donald Lines Jacobus, History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield, 2 volumes (Fairfield: Tuttle, Morehoues & Taylor Co., 1930), 1:77, 494.

2. George Clarke Bryant, “Prudden-Burr Connection”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 84 (January 1930): 63.

3. Susan Woodruff Abbott, Families of Early Milford, (Clearfield: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1979), 611.

4. James Savage, Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 volumes (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1861), 3:491-492.

5. Henry R. Stiles, History of Ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut, 2 volumes (New York: Grafton Press, 1904), 1:139.

6. Lillian E. Prudden, Peter Prudden – A Story of His Life, (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., 1901), 56-58.

7. Rev. E. B. Huntington, History of Stamford, Connecticut, (Stamford: Wm. W. Gillespie & Co., 1868), 269.

8. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, 3 volumes, (Cambridge: Charles William Sever, 1881), 2:258-259.

G3NCR42Y (talk) 15:56, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Proposed major edit to add information
The summary of Willett's life in the article is currently based upon a copy of unreferenced material (i.e., the "citation needed" area). Some of this material is subject to dispute in the references below.

The current article is also thinly sourced and can be improved by addition of material from and references to additional sources, including:

Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation

Burgess: Thomas Willett of Leyden and Plymouth, First Mayor of New York. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, LXI, pp.157-164.

Dexter: The England and Holland of the Pilgrims

Gay (transcriber): Edward Ashley, Trader at Penobscot. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society Third Series, 45, pp. 415-485. (Transcription of originals in the Public Record Office, London (State Papers, Colonial, vi. 40)).

Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England.

Bunker: Making Haste from Babylon (The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World)

(NOTE: these citations are not in the standard form which would be used in the revised article.)

I am proposing to work on a draft edit/update of the article while maintaining the current article as-is for the present. The attempt being to prevent a mess being displayed to those accessing the article.

Rdschillawski (talk) 18:18, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

A nearly completed draft is of the proposed major update and edit is available for review and comment at User:Rdschillawski/sandbox. Any constructive input is very welcome. I expect to be making some minor changes to the draft before transferring it to the main Thomas Willett page sometime around February 1, 2022.

Rdschillawski (talk) 23:15, 26 January 2022 (UTC)