Whiting, William, 1659 - 1733

William Whiting was the son of John and Sybil Whiting of Salem, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut.  He married Mary Allyn in Hartford in 1686 and had three children: Mary, Charles and William. Scipio TwoShoes, a Wangunk, was part of Whiting's household as a servant.

He represented Hartford at the General Court, becoming speaker at the 1714 session, and served as sheriff of Hartford (1701-1722).  Whiting became colonel of a regiment of foot in 1692, commissioned a major in 1705, and served in the expedition against Canada in 1711. Appointed Captain of the Hartford County Troop in 1698, he rose to major and commander-in-chief of an army sent against the Indians in May 1704. Five years later, he was made a colonel and served in New Hampshire during the French and Indian War.

Whiting also held several public offices. In 1696, he was appointed a committee on a controversy between William Brewster and Owaneco over land at Lebanon, Connecticut. He served as Clerk of the Connecticut House of Representatives (1698-1699 and 1712), Representative for Hartford (1712-1714, 1716-1718), and High Sheriff of Hartford County (1701 until at least 1722).

He later removed to Newport, Rhode Island where the Rhode Island General Assembly appointed him Judge of the Admiralty Court in 1728 to replace the deceased John Menzies.  Scipio, by then free, followed Whiting to Newport and continued their relationship until Whiting's death in 1733.

Henry A. Baker, History of Montville, Connecticut (Hartford: The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1896), 715.  Hermes and Maravel, "Scipio Twoshoes, Scipio Brown and Col William Whiting: Identity and Transformation in Early Eighteenth-Century Newport"