By R. L. Bassenden

When we consider the American connection in the ancient Parish of Warton, it is inevitable that the name Washington crosses one’s mind. It is possible, however, that the Parish and in particular, Yealand, has other ties with the New World.

The Thorntons were for many years influential yeomen farmers in the Lune Valley, and with the rise of non-conformism, Thomas Thornton and his wife Elizabeth appear to be the first of their namesakes to join the ranks of the Quakers.

Thomas was baptised on 8 October 1648 and died on 4 June 1709, and in the records of the Lancaster Friends’ Monthly Meeting is an obituary dated 14.8 mo. 1709 which reads (in an abbreviated form) as follows;

Thomas Thornton of Deep Clough was convinced of the Truth about the year 1687, and appeared in a public Testimony to it in the year 1691, and travelled in the Service of Truth, Visiting of Friends in several adjacent Counties….he was removed hence by Death on the 4th of the 8 month 1709 at his owne house.

His wife Elizabeth survived him, dying in 1732. They had a large family of at least six sons and two daughters. They are all described as of Deep Clough, a remote farm on the falls behind Caton. The date stone over the farmhouse door reads

T

T E

16 79

and records these two, who were also buried, so the records of the Lancaster Friends Monthly Meeting inform us, at Deep Clough itself. At present there is no sign of the actual burial ground at Deep Clough, but there exists one of those annoying rumours, which one can never ascertain for certain, that in living memory there used to be the remains of grave headstones in what is now the chicken run of the farmhouse.

When Elizabeth Thornton died in 1732, Deep Clough was left to her sole remaining son, Jonathan, who had been born on 14 March 1691. Prior to this, his brother William had died in 1715, leaving all his personal estate, including the farm of Hole House, in Caton, to Jonathan, William being unmarried. This would have been a great boon to Jonathan, for he married in 1722, one Margaret Birkett, the daughter of James and Elizabeth Birkett, whose letter to the Friends in Lancaster to give their consent to the marriage was addressed from ‘Wood’ in Cartmel.

Margaret Birkett also wrote informing the Friends that she was willing to the proposed match, and Jonathan Thornton’s mother wrote from Yealand agreeing to the marriage.

Well, the marriage took place, and the births of four boys and four girls are recorded in the Quaker Register of Births at Lancaster. The first three of these were in 1723, 1724 and 1726, after which the house at Hole House apparently became a little too small, for the following datestone, found at Hole House records the extension of the living accommodation

T

T M

17 27

This stone was recently removed from a barn doorway, on a building adjacent to the present farmhouse, and now has been re-located over a new upstairs bedroom window at the rear of the house. Our suggestion that the 1727 datestone indicates an extension to the living accommodation is substantiated by the presence of old exterior walls, some 2’6″ to 3” thick, now acting as interior walls, and also by the existence of the site of a gable window in the house wall that now looks into the barn.

We lose trace of Jonathan and his family after the birth of his eighth child in November 1739, till the following record is made in the Minutes of the Lancaster Quaker Monthly Meeting, dated 1751, concerning the Certificate of Removal of one James Birket. This reads:

’A certificate on behalf of our Friend James Birket, who hath for several years resided in Antigua, but properly a Member of this Meeting, and as we apprehend about to settle in Tortola or Philadelphia, was read, approved and signed by this Meeting.’

Now, Jonathan Thornton’s father-in-law was one James Birkett, who was married to Elizabeth (nee Hinde) of Crossgill – not far from Deep Clough – and according to an Indenture dated 12 April 1735, James Birkett and Elizabeth, his wife, were defendants in the case with one James Birkett the younger, possibly his son.

Is this James Birkett the younger the person referred to above as residing in Antigua? If so, then he would be about the same age as Jonathan Thornton’s son William, whose application for a Certificate for Removal was made to the Friends’ Lancaster Monthly Meeting on the 2nd day of the 1st month 1735. This application was noted as follows:

William Thornton, son of Jonathan Thornton, having signified his intention to remove and settle in the Island of Tortola, requests our Certificate. It appearing to be with the consent of his parents etc: a certificate signifying his Membership & Unity with us was read & approved in this Meeting & Signed by several Friends.

This type of Certificate was usual when a member of one Meeting passed to the area of another Meeting in a different part of the country, and was part of the close-knit fellowship which did so much to hold the Quaker community together, and the fact that his cousin, James Birkett, was already established in this far flung outpost of empire would undoubtedly have influenced the decision of young William Thornton, then about 24 years old, to set out to seek his fortune in the West Indies.

It is interesting to surmise exactly why young James Birkett should set out to the New World. Was it purely on account of religious convictions? We think it may not have been wholly so, when we read an account in the autobiography of William Stout, the Quaker tradesman of Lancaster. In this he mentions James Birkett of Wood in Cartmel as having married Elizabeth, the daughter of Margaret Hind, of Littledale. William Stout and Elijah Salthouse, also a Quaker of Lancaster (who died about 1730), were appointed, under Mrs Hind’s will, executors in trust for her daughter. These two Quakers, finding James Birkett in good circumstances, and apparently ‘very capable to manage this concern’, considered themselves justified (with Mrs Birkett’s consent; in assigning the trust to Birkett himself, but some years later, they had occasion to regret having done so, for Birkett ‘undertook merchandising and other projects he did not understand, and engaged in partnership with men of declining circumstances and expensive company, so as to waste his estate and what he had in trust for his wife, and became bankrupt’.

Another piece of apparently confirmatory information is the existence of an Indenture dated 12 April 1735, recording the sale of the Croskill Estate in Caton by Thomas Birket, Mercer, of Whitby, James Birkett, Yeoman of Wood-in-Cartmel and Miles Birkett, Merchant, of Lancaster for £366.13.4d to one William Lawkland, acting on behalf of Henry Croft. Does this indicate that James Birkett was trying to raise capital in 1735, due to financial embarrassment?

Anyhow, William Thornton set out and became one amongst the active early members of the Quakers forming the Tortola Meeting, marrying another Quaker, Dorcas Zeagers of Tortola, on 1 August 1757. They had two sons, William born 27 May 1761, and a second son, Edward, of whom little is known, except that he died in November 1781. For some reason, the father was ‘disowned’ by the Quakers in 1760, and this may account for the fact that the births of the two sons are not recorded in the Quaker Registers for Tortola.

In passing, one notes that a further two sons of Jonathan Thornton, in addition to William, also emigrated to the West Indies: Thomas the elder went to St Michael, Barbados, whilst Jonathan junior went to Bridgetown, Barbados. Life was short, and William died when he was only 31, Thomas when he was 32, and Jonathan did not reach the age of 48.

When he was only about five years old, William junior was sent with his brother Edward to England for his education – this was probably due to the fact that his father had died in 1761, about the time of his birth, and his mother had married again in 1755 to Mr John Baillie.

In England, William junior and his brother were sent to live with their grandmother and their two aunts, Miss Jane and Miss Mary Thornton at Green Aire, in Lancaster. Where he went to school cannot be ascertained, but Robert Sutcliff, in his book, Travels in Some Parts of North America, in years 1804, 1805 & 1806, published in 1812, mentions meeting ’Dr Thornton, one of the Magistrates of Washington City, and who was some years a school-fellow with me at Yealand, near Lancaster’. At this time there was a Quaker School at Yealand, but it has not been possible to locate the names of scholars during the period when William Thornton and Robert Sutcliff could have been there.

Whilst he was in England, his father-in-law Mr John Baillie died, for in 1722 William’s mother married for the third time, this time to the Hon. Thomas Thomason, with whom young William stayed for a time at No. 15 Norfolk Street, Strand, London, according to the notes of an address read before the Columbia Historical Society in May 1914. It is not known when this was.

Charles F. Jenkins in his book Tortola reports that William became a druggist’s clerk at Ulverston, and Roy Thornton, in his letter dated 7 July 1983, says that he has found that this druggist must have been the son of Dr Stephen Fell and his wife Margaret nee Skirrow & daughter of Thomas Skirrow of Wray, the village where the elder Jonathan was buried). Dr Stephen Fell & his wife were both Quakers, married 4 December 1718.

There does exist, although it is not easily available, being part of a collection of 17 volumes of Thornton Papers held in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., a diary kept by William Thornton for the period 1777 to 1782, whilst he was at Ulverston and Edinburgh. Unfortunately the latter part of it is in shorthand, but as an American author hopes shortly to publish a book on William Thornton, it is hoped that more light will be thrown on these formative years of William’s life. [Ed A book titled William Thornton M.D. Gentleman of the Enlightenment]

Edinburgh University, however, confirms that William Thornton was a medical student there from 1781 to 1783, after which, according to the Columbia Historical Society paper referred to above, he was a pupil in St Bartholomew’s Hospital for six months, from 1 October 1783. He was then awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1784 by the University of Aberdeen before continuing his studios in Paris.

By June 1786 he was back in Tortola, and later in that year he came to the States. In 1787 he was in New York, then living in Wilmington, Delaware, and about this time he became more than a little disturbed by the condition of the negroes, and in a letter written from New York to a fellow doctor. Dr J. C. Lettsom, he pointed out that he was entitled to between 70 and 80 slaves, and half the landed estate held by his family on Tortola, and was considering implementing a strong desire to transport the free blacks of the North, as well as the slaves on his Tortola plantation, to their native homes in Africa. Dr Lettsom, however, dissuaded him from this project, and advised him to return to Tortola, ‘get a sufficiency and come to England, I hardly think that island is worthy of thee’. This would be in 1789, when Thornton was 28.

Dr Lettsom’s advice was undoubtedly based on his own personal experience, for he too had been born in the Windward Islands, on the Island of Little Jost Van Dykes, just off the shore of Tortola. He was some 17 years older than Thornton, but like him had been sent to Lancaster, England, at the age of about five years old, for his education. He had been put in the care of a sea captain, one William Lindo, who had delivered him to the safe keeping of two brothers, Abraham & Hutton Rawlinson, who carried out an extensive trade with these islands. At their house he met Samuel Fothergill, the brother of the famous London surgeon, Dr John Fothergill.

Littsom was educated at the Quaker school at Penketh, but when he was 14 his father died and soon afterwards his mother married again. It would appear that at this stage he came under the guardianship of Samuel Fothergill at Warrington, and it was from here that he set out by packhorse on the fifty mile journey to Settle, where at the age of 16 he was apprenticed to one Abraham Sutcliff, an apothecary, with whom he spent five happy years, followed by a year in a hospital in London.

It is interesting to note that this Abraham Sutcliff was the father of the Robert Sutcliff, whose book on his travels in North America we have referred to above, and from which book we have discovered that he and William Thornton were at school at Yealand at the same time, providing yet another example of the close-knit interchange of assistance in Quaker circles.

Then on 8 October 1767, Lettsom, aged 22, set sail on a two month journey to Tortola to claim his inheritance. On arrival he found the estate much depleted, but as one of his first acts, in accordance with his Quaker tradition, he set free the slaves belonging to the estate. He remained in Tortola for 6 months, practicing medicine; he was most popular, and made a considerable amount of money. He then returned to England in July 1768 to complete his medical education at Edinburgh. He never returned to Tortola, dying on 1 November 1815. He was buried in Bunhill Fields Friends’ Burying Ground, in London.

The following is an interesting extract from a letter written from Cork, and dated 23 August 1777:

Two Lancaster men sailed from hence a few days ago for the West Indies, but last week they met an American privateer, which they engaged, and Captain Celland, of the ‘Sally’ was killed, and the mate struck to the privateer; but Captain Preston, of the ‘Rawlinson’, fought the privateer five hours, and beat her off and retook the ‘Sally’, which he is afraid was taken again last Saturday morning, by another privateer. The ‘Rawlinson’, being much shattered, is put back here, in order to refit.

Could the ‘Rawlinson’ have been connected with the family to whom the young Lettsom was sent? It is an interesting speculation, but perhaps no more than that.

Prior to this, Thornton had become an American citizen on 7 January 1788; and then on 13 October 1790 William Thornton married Anna Maria, the daughter of Mrs Brodeau, a successful Philadelphia school mistress. William was then 23 years old, his wife was only 15. After the wedding the couple departed for Tortola, where they remained for two years, during which time William carried on his profession as a physician, and also wrote a book entitled Cadmus, or a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language. The book was published in Philadelphia in 1793 and earned him the award of a gold medal from the American Philosophical Society.

Then in March 1792, while William was still in Tortola, Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, advertised, asking for plans for the President’s house and for the Capitol. Thornton asked permission to submit plans, but by the time he had completed his plan for the Capitol, the competition was closed. Luckily for him, none of the 14 drawings submitted was satisfactory, and Thornton took his plan to President Washington, who was so pleased with it that he gave Thornton a letter to the Commissioners urging them to accept it. Thornton’s plan for the Capitol was accepted, and he was awarded the prize of $500 and a plot for a house in the new City of Washington. Prior to this, Thornton, although not trained in architecture, had produced the winning plan for the new building for the Philadelphia Library, founded by Benjamin Franklin some years previously.

This was the start of a close friendship between Thornton and Washington, and numerous letters between them have been preserved in the Congressional Library at Washington, D.C. In 1794 Thornton was made one of the three Commissioners for the building of the city, and in 1802 he was made the first Commissioner of Patents, a post which he held until his death in 1828.

In later years Thornton bought a large farm outside Washington, D.C., for which Washington himself sent him three shagbark hickory trees. He maintained a racecourse and appears to have deserted many of his Quaker principles, when the English burned down the Capitol and White House in 1812, William Thornton was an officer of militia endeavouring to stop them.

As an American citizen and a friend of George Washington, Thornton obviously identified with the friends and surroundings of his mature years. The Quaker convictions of his youth had been modified; indeed, he withdrew from the Society of Friends and felt able, as we see, to take up arms and horse racing! On his death he was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington.

Adjacent to the Rotunda in the present Capitol in Washington, there is a commemorative plaque to ‘William Thornton – First Architect of the Capitol, 1793-1794’. It does not mention his schooldays in Yealand!

Sources

• Jenkins, C.F. Tortola
• Hazelton, The National Capitol, Its Architecture, Art and History
• Clark, A.C. Dr and Mrs Thornton
• Marshall, J.D., ed, The Autobiography of William Stout
• Minutes of the Monthly Meeting of Lancaster Friends Family Records of Mr Roy Thornton
• Lancaster newspapers,
• Lancaster Reference Library
• Lancashire Record Office
• Edinburgh University Library
• Aberdeen University Library

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 9 Autumn 1984