Stanton, Thomas, 1616 - 1677

Thomas Stanton, Sr. was born in Wollerton, Warwickshire on July 30, 1616. He immigrated to Virginia in 1635 but then abruptly moved to Boston, joining the Puritan congregation in Newtown that later transplanted to Hartford. Stanton erected a trading post at Pacawtuck in 1650 and resettled his family shortly thereafter. As early as 1636, he acted as an Indian interpreter for colonial affairs, being officially appointed as such for the Connecticut colony in 1638, and similarly commissioned later by the United Colonies of New England, rising to the rank of interpreter general in 1658.  In that capacity Stanton also served as an official messenger between government officials and the Indians and investigator into Indian affairs in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Long Island.  In 1650 he was employed to assist missionaries to the Indians, and six years later, called on to help Abraham Pierson prepare a catechism in the Pequot and Narragansett language, a project which never materialized.  He was a magistrate in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1637), a deputy magistrate (1651, 1666),  commissioner of Stonington (1665), member of the Connecticut General Assembly (1666-1674), and overseer of the Indians at Cossatuck in 1666. His service in the Pequot War has been noticed in Mason's narrative (John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War (Boston, 1763)) and in John Underhill's Newes from America (London, 1638).  Thomas Stanton, Sr. died in Stonington on December 2, 1677. William A. Stanton, A Record, Genealogical, Biographical, Statistical, of Thomas Stanton, of Connecticut, and His Descendants, 1635-1891 (Albany: J. Munsell's Sons, 1891) 11-22.