Joseph Whiting

Father of Mary (Whiting) Sheldon, and for thirty-nine years Treasurer of the Colony of Connecticut. The son of William Whiting, the colony's first treasurer, he "was a merchant, first of Westfield, Mass., but returned to Hartford in 1675 or 6. He was Treasurer of the Colony of Connecticut from 1678 until his death (thirty-nine years) in 1717" (source). At Westfield he was made cornet of the Hampshire troops in 1672. He married first Mary, daughter of John Pynchon of Springfield and granddaughter of William Pynchon, the founder; she bore him Mary (1672) and Joseph (1674) and died soon after.

King Philip's War. He was the cornet, the standard-bearer, of the troop his father-in-law, John Pynchon, commanded: "HAMPSHIRE TROOP. John Pynchon, Capt. William Allis, Lieut. Joseph Whiting, Cornet" (Soldiers in King Philip's War, p. 475). With three Dewey brothers he owned Westfield's mills: "the mills owned by three Dewey brothers, Thomas, Josiah and Jedadiah, and Joseph Whiting, on Two-Mile brook ... had been completed in 1672." When Springfield's corn mill was burned with the town on 5 Oct 1675, "the people of Springfield resorted to Westfield to have their corn ground" (A History of the Town of Westfield, p. 12). Rev. Edward Taylor, Westfield's minister, wrote that the town's "soil was moistened by the blood of three Springfield men, young Goodman Dumbleton, who came to our mill, and two sons of Goodman Brooks," killed in the first attack on Westfield (same, p. 12), on 27 Oct 1675 by Judd's count (The First Century of the History of Springfield, 1:134).

In 1675 or 1676, perhaps driven by Westfield's danger, he went back to Hartford. In 1676 he married Anne Allyn, whose father, Capt. John Allyn, was Secretary of Connecticut and sat on its Council of War through the fighting (Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 2:423 and passim); the letters from Hadley before and after the Falls Fight in May 1676 were addressed "These for the worshipful John Allyn, Esq. Secretary, to be communicated to the Council" (History of Hadley, pp. 162, 166).

By Anne Allyn he had seven more children. In 1682 he bought a house on Main Street in Hartford, "near the corner of Charter Oak Avenue"; built before 1650, it "probably never faced upon the street, but looked out upon the garden," and "The Whiting house was a hospitable place. Many distinguished guests, prominent in Colonial days, were the guests of Capt. Joseph Whiting" (source). He died at Hartford on 8 Oct 1717, and his son John held the treasurer's office for thirty-two years after him (source).

Research: Patricia Hatten's Browne–Chapin side: the pedigree, notable ancestors and famous kin; the war: King Philip's War: the Connecticut valley, the Colony of Connecticut, Long Island and New Paltz.

Open questions

• When he left Westfield for Hartford, and whether he kept his share of the mill through the war: Westfield town records and Edward Taylor's church record.