decision to fight the war, claiming that it "would be the last choice of my mind" and that a policy of pursuing peace on the Ohio Country frontier was far more preferable. Willett was subsequently appointed to serve as a emissary to the Northwestern Confederacy, which he also declined. From 1807 to 1808, Willett served as New York City mayor, having previously joined the Democratic-Republican Party. In 1811, the death of John Broome left a vacancy in the office of New York Lieutenant Governor. Willett participated in a special election as the Tammany Hall candidate, where he was defeated by DeWitt Clinton; this led to Willett retiring from politics. On August 22, 1830, Willett died and was buried in Trinity Church, after a lavish funeral service which included 10,000 mourners. His corpse was later reburied in the New York City Marble Cemetery. Personal life, family, and legacy Throughout his life, Willett was "[very] interested in social services and the needs of [American] citizens", establishing several relief centers, medical centers, and hospitals in New York City "to assist the needy". Having amassed a personal fortune through land speculation and the purchase of confiscated Loyalist estates after the Revolutionary War, Willett invested in these medical institutions and took an active interest in their management until his death in 1830. Willett was one of the original members of the Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal hereditary society founded in 1783; the society's membership was restricted to those who had served as military officers in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. In 1791, Willett commissioned American painter Ralph Earl to paint a full-length portrait of him. In , he paid for the neoclassicist artist John Vanderlyn to paint his wife Margaret and son Marinus Jr. Over the course of his life, Willett married thrice. In 1760, he married Mary Pearsee, and had one child together, a son named Marinus, Jr. who died in 1778. After Mary passed away in 1793, Willett remarried to a widow named Susannah Vardill; the marriage ended in 1799, when she filed for divorce from him. Willett remarried again for a third and final time to Margaret Bancker , with whom he had five children: Marinus Jr., William, Edward, Elbert, and Margaret. Numerous locations were named after Willett both during and after his life. A street in Albany, New York, bordering Washington Park, was named in honor of