Mayhew was the only son of Gov. Thomas Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard. The name of his mother is not known and few of the details of his early life are recorded. He was born in England and it is supposed that he came to America with his father in 1631 and that his boyhood days were spent at Medford and Watertown in the Massachusetts colony. With his father he was in 1641 granted the ownership and government of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands. A settlement was planted on Martha's Vineyard in 1642 by a group of colonists under the leadership of the younger Thomas, at what is now Edgartown.
Education
Thomas Jr. was well educated and proficient in Latin and Greek, and also knew a small amount of Hebrew.
Career
A church society was early formed and the plantation's youthful leader, who had shortly before attained his majority, was called to its pastoral office. His pity was aroused by the poverty and ignorance of the Indian inhabitants of the Vineyard and the islands adjacent. Acquiring a knowledge of their language, in which he became a recognized proficient, he undertook to convert them to Christianity. His first convert was Hiacoomes, who accepted the white man's faith in 1643, three years before missionary work was begun on the mainland by John Eliot. Mayhew trained Hiacoomes and another Indian to preach to their fellows on Sundays, and himself conducted fortnightly services, spending more time in "familiar reasoning" than in the sermon itself. In 1652 he opened a school to teach the Indian children to read. His labors progressed in spite of the early enmity of powwows and sagamores, who were generally against the new way. In time Indian priests and noblemen alike were converted. The expenses of the mission were for many years borne by Mayhew out of his private purse. Devoting almost his entire time to the Indian service, he neglected his personal estate, which in consequence became so seriously impaired that "'twas bare with him for food & rayment". The Indian mission at Martha's Vineyard was one of the first Protestant missions in the world to have more than ephemeral existence. Shortly before the founder's death the work came under the financial patronage of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, an organization of philanthropists in London incorporated by Parliament to support the work of Mayhew and Eliot. Mayhew sailed for England in 1657, accompanied by an Indian convert, with the double purpose of stimulating interest in missionary work and attending to matters of business connected with the patrimony of his wife, whose father had died seized of estates in Northamptonshire. The ship in which he took passage was lost at sea and the missionary was never heard of again. In conjunction with John Eliot, Thomas Mayhew, Jr. , was the author of a number of Indian tracts published in London. These included The Glorious Progress of the Gospel (1649) and Tears of Repentance (1653).
Achievements
Thomas Mayhew is known as the first English missionary to the Indians of New England.
Connections
By his wife, Jane Paine, daughter of Thomas Paine, a London merchant, and Jane (Gallion) Paine who married as her second husband the elder Thomas Mayhew, Thomas the younger had three sons, one of whom, John, became minister at Tisbury and Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard, and was the father of Experience Mayhew.
