Samuel Wyllys papers (Ms.Wyllys)

Biographical note

Samuel Wyllys was born in Fenny Compton (Warwickshire), England in 1631, the son of George and Mary Smith Wyllys. The family joined the Puritan Great Migration to Massachusetts a few years later, and established a new home at Hartford by 1638. Samuel attended Harvard College, and graduated in 1653. He was subsequently elected a Connecticut magistrate in 1654, at the tender age of twenty-two, and re-elected every year until Connecticut received its charter in 1662. After that, Wyllys was elected an Assistant to the colony's governor, a post to which he was also returned many times. He was later a commissioner to the New England Colonies.

Wyllys married Ruth Haynes, daughter of the first governor of the colony of Connecticut, in 1654. They had three daughters (Mary, Mehitable and Ruth) and a son named Hezekiah. Wyllys died at Hartford on May 30, 1709.