Thomas Welles

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Thomas Welles (born around 1598 in Essex , England , † January 14, 1660 in Connecticut ) was an English politician and the only man in Connecticut's history who held all four higher state offices: governor , lieutenant governor, treasury secretary and secretary.

Career

Thomas Welles married Alice Tomes on July 5, 1615 in Long Marston, Gloucestershire, with whom he had eight children. He then decided to emigrate to America with his family . They arrived in Boston , Massachusetts in 1636 . After his first wife died, he remarried in 1646 in Wethersfield Elizabeth, sister of John Deming and widow of Nathaniel Foote . Elizabeth brought seven children into the new relationship, although it should be noted that Thomas Welles and Elizabeth Deming had no children together.

First appears Governor Thomas Welles' name in Hartford on March 28, 1637 while in the colonial archive of Connecticut ( Engl. Connecticut Colonial Records ). Welles arrived at Hartford with the clergyman Thomas Hooker in June 1636. Some believe a copy of the grant naming him confirms this statement. He was elected magistrate of the Colony of Connecticut in 1637, an office to which he was re-elected each successive year until his death in 1660, for a period of twenty-one years. In addition, Welles was elected the first Finance Minister (English. Connecticut State Treasurer ) of the Colony of Connecticut in 1639 and held the office of Colonial Secretary from 1640 to 1649. In this function he implemented the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was recorded in the official colonial archives on January 14, 1638 (OS) and January 24, 1639 (NS). Welles was later elected lieutenant governor in 1654 and governor of the Colony of Connecticut in 1655. He was then lieutenant governor under John Winthrop, Jr. in 1656 and 1657, governor in 1658 and lieutenant governor again in 1659, a position he held until his death on January 14, 1660.

family

Welles' eldest son John settled in Stratford in 1645 , where he served as magistrate and probate before his death in 1659. His other son, Thomas, settled in Hartford. His daughter Rebecca married Captain James Judson and they both settled in Stratford in 1680. James and Rebecca's son David, also a captain, built the Captain David Judson House , which is located on the same spot where his great-grandfather William built his first stone house in 1639. Welles' other son, Samuel, became captain and settled in Wethersfield . His daughter Sarah married Ephraim Hawley from Stratford and both settled in what is now Trumbull in 1683 .

literature

  • Frederick Calvin Norton, Governors of Connecticut , 1905
  • Reverend Samuel Orcutt, History of the Old Town of Stratford, Connecticut , 1886
  • Edmund Welles, The Life and Public Services of Thomas Welles, Fourth Governor of Connecticut , 1940
  • Lemuel Welles, The English Ancestry of Gov. Thomas Welles of Connecticut, New England Historical and Genealogical Register , 1926

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ White, James T. The National Cyclopædia of American Biography . James T. White & Company (1909), Vol. X, p. 320.
personal data
SURNAME Welles, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American colonial governor
DATE OF BIRTH around 1598
PLACE OF BIRTH Essex , England
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1660
Place of death Connecticut