Background
Thomas Fitch was a great-grandson of Thomas Fitch, one of the earliest settlers of Norwalk, Conn. , and was born in that town, the son of Thomas Fitch, Jr. , and his wife Sarah.
Thomas Fitch was a great-grandson of Thomas Fitch, one of the earliest settlers of Norwalk, Conn. , and was born in that town, the son of Thomas Fitch, Jr. , and his wife Sarah.
He graduated from Yale College in 1721.
He began his political career in 1726 as deputy from Norwalk to the General Assembly, serving on four subsequent occasions during the next five years.
He was reelected by the fieemen in each of the three following years. In 1754 when Governor Wolcott came under popular suspicion in connection with the embezzlement of most of the cargo of a Spanish ship which had put into New London harbor in distress, as a result, Fitch attained the distinction of being the first man to defeat a Connecticut governor for reelection when the latter was an avowed candidate.
Fitch was elected governor and held the office continually thereafter until 1766 when he was defeated because of his attitude in the Stamp Act controversy. Although regularly nominated for the magistracy in each of the remaining years of his life, he was never again elected.
Fie was a deputy from Norwalk in 1772 but never held any royal appointments in Massachusetts as has sometimes been inferred.
Fitch was a lawyer by profession. In this capacity he served the colony on several occasions, including notably the land controversy with the Mohican Indians and the dispute with Massachusetts over the boundary. He was given charge of the revision of the laws of Connecticut, a task which he completed with some assistance in 1749.
As deputy governor from 1750 to 1754 he was regularly appointed, as was the custom, chief judge of the superior courts.
As a young man he served as supply for the pulpit of the Norwalk church and in 1765 there appeared a tract, attributed to Fitch, which analyzed the Saybrook Platform of the consociated churches of Connecticut. It was, however, in his capacity as governor during a term which included the last intercolonial war and the Stamp Act controversy that he was most distinguished. He was an ardent supporter of the British cause during the war and was largely responsible for the fact that the Connecticut Assembly more than once exceeded its quota of troops, although he did not entirely es cape the impatient criticism of the British commanders-in-chief. When, after the close of the war, proposals were first made for parliamentary taxation of the colonies, the Assembly requested Fitch and certain others to draw up the objections of the colony to such legislation. The resulting “Book of Reasons, ” for which the governor was chiefly responsible, was a clear and concise statement of the constitutional, historical, and economic arguments of the colony against the proposed stamp tax (Reasons why the British Colonies in America, Should not be Charged with Internal Taxes, by Authority of Parliament; Humbly offered for Consideration in Behalf of the Colony of Connecticut, 1764).
Fitch’s legalistic mind, which had been most helpful in this work, caused his downfall when the Stamp Act had finally been passed.
Although he was unsympathetic to the tax, he believed in submission to parliamentary enactment and considered it his duty to take the oath required of all governors by the act. In defense of his action he published a small tract which contained logical reasoning and sound arguments but which completely ignored the feelings and passions of the colonists (Some Reasons that Influenced the Governor to Take, and the Councillors to Administer the Oath, Required by the Act of Parliament; commonly called the Stamp-Act. Humbly submitted to the Consideration of the Publick, 1766). Neither this pamphlet, however, nor the support of the conservatives of the colony, was able to save him in the election of May 1766.
He was an Assistant in 1734-35 and again during 1740-50, when, upon the death of Governor Jonathan Law and the advancement of Deputy Governor Roger Wolcott, he was chosen deputy governor by the Assembly over the heads of the three senior Assistants. Many years after Fitch’s death President Dwight of Yale referred to him as “probably the most learned lawyer, who had ever been an inhabitant of the Colony” (Travels, III, 504).
Although little is known of his personality, he displayed in all his actions a high sense of duty, courage, and an outlook on politics which extended beyond the confines of his little colony and included the larger world of the British Empire.
In 1724 he married Hannah Hall of New Haven, who bore him eight children.
