28 Facts About Thomas Danforth

Thomas Danforth was a politician, magistrate, and landowner in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Thomas Danforth accumulated land in the central part of the colony that eventually became a portion of Framingham, Massachusetts.

In reality, Thomas Danforth is recorded as being critical of the conduct of the trials, and played a role in bringing them to an end.

Thomas Danforth was the eldest son of Nicholas Danforth and Elizabeth Symmes.

Thomas Danforth immigrated with his father, brothers Samuel and Jonathan, and sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and Lydia to New England in 1634, probably aboard the Griffin.

Thomas Danforth died in 1638, leaving his lands and the care of his younger children to Thomas.

In 1643 Thomas Danforth was admitted a freeman of the colony, which conferred on him the right to vote and to participate in the colony's political affairs.

Thomas Danforth was appointed Treasurer of Harvard College in its charter of 1650, and served as a steward of the college from 1669 to 1682.

In 1665 Thomas Danforth was member of a commission that oversaw the extension of Massachusetts colonial authority over the territories of what is southern Maine, which colonial surveyors had determined to fall within its borders.

Thomas Danforth was one member of a committee that was established to formulate a response.

When King Philip's War broke out in 1675, Thomas Danforth was involved in some of the events of the war.

Thomas Danforth, along with Daniel Gookin and the Indian missionary Reverend John Eliot, was a vocal supporter of the Praying Indians, and worked to prevent some of these excesses, at some personal risk.

In one notable instance Thomas Danforth was aboard a small boat with other colonial officials in Boston Harbor en route to Long Island to inspect facilities for Praying Indians who had been relocated there "for their own safety" when a nearby ship apparently intentionally rammed the smaller vessel.

In 1680 Thomas Danforth was chosen president in the District of Maine by the Massachusetts assembly.

Agents for Massachusetts then purchased the territory from the Gorges heirs, and Thomas Danforth was appointed to administer it.

The territory had been devastated and many properties abandoned during King Philip's War, and Thomas Danforth acted in effect as a Lord Proprietor, making land grants and reestablishing towns such as Falmouth and North Yarmouth.

Thomas Danforth was rewarded by the colony with a grant of an island in Casco Bay for this work, which he oversaw until 1686.

Thomas Danforth was one of the leading opponents to making any accommodation to the king's demands.

The issue reached a peak in the 1684 election, in which Thomas Danforth stood for election as governor representing the hardline party.

Thomas Danforth was narrowly defeated by the more conciliatory Simon Bradstreet, but retained the post of deputy governor.

Thomas Danforth appointed Massachusetts native Joseph Dudley as its first governor; he was replaced later that year by Sir Edmund Andros.

Thomas Danforth was not assigned to the special Court of Oyer and Terminer that Phips established shortly thereafter, and he was opposed to the manner in which magistrate William Stoughton conducted the witch trials, which unconditionally accepted spectral evidence in its proceedings and vigorously presumed the guilt of the accused.

When Stoughton temporarily removed himself to protest Governor Phips' ban on spectral evidence and other related reforms, Thomas Danforth sometimes presided over the court.

Thomas Danforth was known to be sympathetic to the plight of individuals accused, relocating some of them to his lands west of Boston in Framingham.

Sarah Cloyce, a woman accused during the Salem witch trials, relocated with her husband to a property owned by Thomas Danforth and settled into a house on Salem End Road constructed in 1693.

In 1992, The Boston Globe published a historian's suggestion that Thomas Danforth might have facilitated Cloyce's escape from Ipswich jail and subsequently concealed her family on his property.

In 1662 Thomas Danforth began to acquire land to the west of Boston by way of land grants by the Great and General Court after general surveys conducted by Edmund Rice at the behest of the Court.

Miller wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film version of the play, in which the name Thomas Danforth was retained as the principal judicial antagonist.