Thomas Millett

He came on the Elizabeth in 1635: "THO: MILLET 30," wife Marie 29, son Tho. 2. The passengers "brought Certi. from the Minister of St Saviors Southwark," and the Foster and Bate families came on the same ship. He joined the Dorchester church in 1636 and was made a freeman on May 17, 1637 (NEHGR 32:56 note). Their son Thomas had been born about 1633 in England, and the rest came at Dorchester: John, 8 (5th mo.) 1635; Jonathan, 27 (5) 1638, who died 15 (6) 1638; Mary, 26 Aug 1639; Mehetabel, 14 (1) 1641, later the wife of Isaac Elwell, a shoemaker of Gloucester; and Nathaniel (1647) (Babson pp. 89, 116).

Gloucester. In 1655 he bought William Perkins's property at Gloucester and succeeded him in a lay religious office. He "came here with the rare title of 'Mr.'" as successor to William Perkins, teaching elder, Babson writes; "Its pecuniary rewards were not always voluntarily bestowed, as the Court Records testify. ... His name does not appear among the ministers of his time; but it is certain that he labored here in spiritual things" (p. 116). His son-in-law Thomas Riggs kept a notebook, and "After his marriage he had a curious arrangement with his father-in-law [Thomas Millett], who paid Mr. Riggs for his board at the rate of two days' labor a week" (Boston Sunday Globe, 16 Mar 1913, quoted in TAG 82:122 n. 14).

Brookfield. In his last years he moved to Brookfield. "There is evidence that he succeeded Mr. Younglove as minister at Brookfield in 1674 ... He received a grant of a home-lot of '20 acres, and 10 acres of meadow,'" and he "was with his wife living in Brookfield June 3, 1675, when he gave consent to the sale of land in Gloucester" (Temple, History of North Brookfield, p. 67).

King Philip's War. That summer the war reached Brookfield. On 2 Aug 1675 Capt. Edward Hutchinson's and Capt. Thomas Wheeler's party was ambushed near the town, "eight men outright" killed, and the townspeople held out in Ayres's garrison until Major Willard came on the evening of the 4th; the town was burned and abandoned (Soldiers in King Philip's War, p. 30). Among the Brookfield dead were Sgt. John Ayres, Sgt. William Prichard, Corporal Richard Coy, and James Hovey, "killed by the Indians Aug. 2, 1675" (Temple p. 67). The Milletts, a local account says, had left "before August 1675, and so were not present at the siege" (record), and his widow was perhaps back at Gloucester by September. He was dead by the end of September, without a will: at Ipswich on 28 Sept 1675, "Thomas Millet dying intestate, court granted administration of the estate to Mary Millet, the relict," and again on 26 Sept 1676 (Essex Quarterly Courts 6:73, 204). The inventory came to £128 and included books (the same local account).

Unsourced online trees make him a son of Henry Myllet of Chertsey and Joice Chapman, or have him baptized on 24 Oct 1604 at Newbury, Berkshire. Mollie's typescript makes him "a certified minister of St. Saviour's," a misreading of the ship's certificate, and gives him a descent from the Milletts of Marazion that has nothing behind it.

Open questions

• His English origin (Chertsey or Newbury) and his marriage date: the Great Migration sketches.
• Where and how he died: his administration papers and inventory (Essex probate, Ipswich court of 28 Sept 1675).