George Wyllys

Father of Amy (Wyllys) Pynchon, and governor of Connecticut in 1642-43. Born to an old and wealthy family at Fenny Compton in Warwickshire, he attended several universities and may have become a Puritan there; he married Bridget Yonge at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1609 and, after her death, the widow Mary Brisbey (source). The Hitchcock genealogy calls him "a man of wealth and a Puritan of the Puritans" (source).

The Charter Oak. In 1636 he sent his steward, William Gibbons, to Hartford "along with 20 domestics and indentured servants in order to buy land and oversee construction of a house. That house was the largest home of any of Hartford's early settlers and one of the largest in Connecticut. The famous Charter Oak stood on the property" (source). The Hitchcock genealogy dates the steward's journey 1638 and says the governor "a year later took possession of the Wyllys estate in Hartford on which stood the tree to become the famous Charter Oak of a later generation." Gibbons's sister married Luke Hitchcock of Wethersfield, the grandfather of Capt. Ebenezer Hitchcock, whose wife Mary Sheldon was the governor's great-great-granddaughter.

The family reached Hartford in 1638. He was an Assistant of the General Court in 1639-41, deputy governor in 1641 and governor in 1642, when the colony passed its first penal code; in 1643 he was a Commissioner for Connecticut to the United Colonies of New England. "On his death in Hartford on March 9, 1644/5, his estate, which included slaves, was the largest in the colony until 1680. No portrait of him is known to exist." He is buried in Hartford's Ancient Burying Ground, and his name is on the Founders Monument (source).

Research: Patricia Hatten's Browne–Chapin side: the pedigree, notable ancestors and famous kin.