Francis Gillette sought Abolitionist and Free Soil nominations for public office. A coalition of minority parties sent him to the U.S. Senate to fill an unexpired term in 1854 to 1855. He was a reformer in abolition, education, and temperance, but he differed with some of his neighbors in his opposition to feminism.

Francis Gillette and Isabella Beecher Hooker's arguments about feminism extended into long public letters in The Hartford Courant. Their friendship and civility at Nook Farm remained intact.

In 1864, Gillette represented the Nook Farm group at a meeting of prosperous and prominent members of the Asylum Hill Community to organize building a church in the vicinity. They formed a committee and raised the funds to build the Asylum Hill Congregational Church.