Thomas Hinckley

Thomas Hinckley
14th Governor of Plymouth Colony
In office 1680–1686
Preceded by	Josiah Winslow
Succeeded by	Joseph Dudley (as President of the Council of New England)
In office 1689–1692
Preceded by	Edmund Andros (as Governor of the Dominion of New England)
Succeeded by	Sir William Phipps (as Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay)
Personal details
Born	March 19, 1618
Died	April 25, 1706 (age 88)
Nationality	English
Spouse(s)	Mary Richards Mary Glover

Thomas Hinckley (bapt. March 19, 1618 – April 25, 1706) was the governor of the Plymouth Colony and held several other governmental positions during his lifetime, including that of a representative, a deputy, magistrate, and assistant, among others. A monument, created in 1829 at the Lothrop Hill cemetery in Barnstable, Massachusetts, attests to his "piety, usefulness and agency in the public transactions of his time."

Thomas Hinckley was born in Tenterden, Kent, England in 1618. His parents, Samuel and Sarah Hinckley, were followers of the Nonconformist minister John Lothropp, in whose church at nearby Hawkhurst Thomas was baptized on March 19, 1618. In 1634 the Hinckleys and Lothropp migrated to New England, although when Thomas came over is uncertain, because he did not travel with his parents. They settled in the Plymouth Colony community of Scituate. In 1637 he was made a freeman of the colony, and in 1639 he followed Lothropp to Barnstable, where he began to assume positions of responsibility in the colonial government. The following is a list of his roles in government and the time he occupied each:

Hinckley married twice; first on December 6, 1641 to Mary Richards, and again to Mary Glover (née Smith) on March 15, 1659. He may have had as many as 17 children; different sources disagree on the exact number. One of his children, Samuel Hinckley (whose mother was Mary Richards), was a direct ancestor of Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as an ancestor of the former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon B. Hinckley. Thomas Hinckley's sister, Susannah Hinckley, is an ancestor of President Barack Obama, which means that Thomas Hinckley's father, Samuel Hinckley, is the ancestor of three U.S. presidents. Although not himself a Mayflower passenger, through the marriage of his grandson Samuel to Mary Freeman, great-granddaughter of Governor Thomas Prence whose wife Patience was a daughter of the Elder Brewster, many of his descendants can claim Mayflower heritage.

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