Looking for Luke, A Thornton Family Narrative

Copyrighted by Richard S. Thornton, August 30, 2011

Introduction

he goal of a family genealogy is to show connections with as many individuals in the past as you can. And if you can find someone important—a King, or a Prince, or at least someone who is famous—it will give credit to the family. The Thornton name has a history in England and members of the family immigrated to various parts of the new Colonies.
        
A few of the settlers became important in the founding of the new country but most of the Thorntons were just ordinary people. One famous Thornton is Matthew Thornton, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. His family came here by way of Ireland and settled in Londonderry, NH around 1740 where he became a physician and politician. Unfortunately his Thornton family is not connected to our Thornton family.
        
Another physician named Matthew Thornton would also become famous as the first architect of the US Capital building. He was born in 1759 in the West Indies and entered the competition for the Capital design in 1792. Even though he was untrained as an architect his design was selected. He was awarded $500 and moved to Washington D.C. He too is not connected to our Thornton family.
        
The reason for writing this narrative is to supplement the ancestral data contained in various records. My aunt Artie Thornton gathered much of the original documentation on the Thornton family. She almost dedicated her later years, after her parents died, to organizing material on the family and encouraging others through her work with the Maysville [Missouri] Historical Society.
        
This narrative does not show all relatives but concentrates on the direct line and their relationships with others inside the Thornton family. Listing only raw data for births, marriages and deaths lacks a perspective on the life of the families and the society in which they lived. Some of the material contained here is speculative and most will need additional research to verify—a never-ending activity. Why do we do it? Maybe we think if we gather enough information on past relatives, our future relatives will not forget us.

In Artie Thornton’s search for a connection to early immigrants, she started with a Luke Thornton who she said migrated from Yorkshire, North Britain to Yorktown, Virginia around 1760. It was this Luke that Artie determined to be the father of William, whose line in our family is clearly documented. Who was this Luke and is there a documented connection with our William? Early in my research I tried to ask Artie questions about where she found some of the material. Did she remember stories her grandfather and grandmother related to her? Were there family records kept somewhere? Unfortunately, my questions came too late. By then Artie was in her mid 90s and living in the Maysville Nursing Home. Her memories had already faded.
        
If Artie was correct and Luke arrived from Yorkshire England in 1760 and settled in Yorktown, VA, unfortunately most of the early Yorktown records were destroyed in the Siege of Yorktown in September 1781, one of the last major battles of the Revolutionary War. Official records of births, marriages, and deaths were burned, making it very difficult to verify dates for events for those who lived in early Yorktown.
        
Several other relatives of William Thornton were also looking for the elusive Luke to find his origins and connections with past and present Thorntons. Combining their research with my review of records in Lunenburg, Virginia; Morgantown, North Carolina and various sources, discoveries were found. Most important is there were four or five Luke Thorntons in Colonial America and some migrated from England more than 100 years earlier than what Aunt Artie thought.
        
There are a few researchers who are interested in the linage of Thorntons in England. For me the best connection is Henry who lived in North End, Fulham, Middlesex, England in the early seventh century. Middlesex is west of London just north of the River Thames. As London increased in population it was eventually part of Greater London. Henry was born around 1606 and married Martha Fludd on Oct 2, 1628 in Fulham. They had five children born in Middlesex between 1630 and 1651. The oldest named Henry born about 1630.
        
One of the best genealogy histories of our line of the Thornton family was written by Ariel L. Crowley who wrote the monograph The Ancestry of Jane Thornton of Spartanburg, South Carolina, wife of Arthur Hutchens of Albemarle Parish, Virginia, and Ancestress of Clarence Edmund Cowley, 1969. Various original records confirm her research.

Life in Early Virginia

When Virginia was first settled in 1642 it had 8,000 people who were mostly of poor status; many were corrupt. The towns created by these settlers were said to be more like a modern military outpost or lumber camps than a permanent society. In the next 35 years there were significant changes in the character of the immigrants. The population increased to 40,000 and many of the new immigrants became the governing elite for America.
        
Those that arrived around 1660 were the royalists from Britain, the “distressed cavaliers,” who became the first families of Virginia. For example, the first of the distinguished Washington families arrived in Virginia in 1657. The Washington family and other emigrants from the upper ranks of the English society became the ruling class in Virginia and eventually USA.  Two thirds of the emigrants in the mid 1660s came from the south and west of England. If this number was added to those who emigrated from London it was three fourths of the total number who arrived. Included from St. Margarets, Westminister, London, were Luke and Deborah Scoper Thornton and their four sons. Luke was under 10 years old when the family set foot on Virginia soil.
        
After they arrived in the new Colonies, the Thornton family settled in the North Farnham Parish, an area is about 60 miles northeast of the city of Richmond, on the north bank of the Rappahannock River. Around 1674 Luke married a local girl, Anne, who was born in North Farnham around 1654. We will keep looking for her family name. By 1692 the old county lines were divided into Richmond and Essex Counties. The Thornton families had land in Richmond and Westmoreland County, a few miles to the north. Some records have Thornton families in Lunenburg Parish, Richmond County, organized in 1707, a few miles west of North Farnham Parish. This Parish was named several years before Lunenburg County was established in the southern part of Virginia. Using the same name for two areas that are over 100 miles apart adds confusion with records of migration.
        
Luke and Anne had eight children, born between 1676 and 1692. All were given familiar Thornton names that were used earlier and have continued in use: Luke, John, Elizabeth, Matthew, Ann, Mark, and Thomas. The connection to our Luke is Mark, whose birth, September 23, 1686, was listed in Virginia Vital Records. Mark Thornton married Mary Bruce, daughter of Henry and Mary Bruce, around 1713. Mary’s father, Henry Bruce, was born in North Farnham in 1664; grew up there and married a local girl, Mary Morton, and had 8 children. The first daughter, fifth child, born April 13, 1692, was named Mary, after her mother. Apparently the Bruce family and Mark lived nearby each other. In Henry Bruce’s will dated Nov 9, 1725 he left his son John “the land where Mark Thornton formerly lived.”
        
Tracing our lineage is difficult because there are too many Thorntons with the same first names that are reused for several generations. It is hard to know which Luke, John, William, and Mark is our line. Some genealogists use the designation Luke 1st, 2nd, etc., but our problem is compounded with the same names used by various siblings. In an attempt to make it clear I will underline our direct male line until the family reaches North Carolina.
        
Mark Thornton and his new wife Mary Bruce had three sons—Mark, John, and Thomas, born between 1713 and 1719. The second son, John, born around 1715, is the father of our elusive Luke.
        
Just a few years after the boys’ birth, in 1721, their father Mark died at age 34. He willed their land to the oldest child, his namesake, Mark. Four years later young Mark [age 12] learned that his grandfather, Luke, died and he was also named in his will. These actions show the advantage to the first-born male child.

John Thornton and Jemimah Longworth

According to the book, Marriages of Some Virginia Residents, 1607-1800, in 1740 John Thornton married Jemimah Longworth, daughter of William and Millicent Ransdell Longworth, who lived in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Westmoreland is just south of the Potomac River and so close to Farnham that the families could have been neighbors. John and Jemimah were married in Orange County VA where her family had moved. Their first-born was named Luke who I believe is the Luke, father of our William. John and Jemimah had five more children: William, Henry, Jane, Randolph, and Josiah.
        
There is another Luke Thornton who attracted attention from those looking for a connection with William Thornton. In the book, Virginia’s Vital Records, there is a listing for the marriage of a Luke Thornton to a “Millisent Longworth” on January 2, 1727 or 1728. Because this Luke Thornton is connected with a Longworth, several Thornton researchers who were looking for Luke identified this couple as the father and mother of our William. This Luke and Millisent had a child named—you guessed it—William, but the dates do not connect with our family. This Luke would be too old — over 50 — when our William was born. Tracing various family records shows how this Luke is not ours.
        
Millicent Ransdell was born about 1702 in Orange County, Virginia, and married William Longworth about 1722. In the next three years they had three children, William, Millicent, and Jemimah. [Our connection is Jemimah who married John Thornton.] William Longworth Sr. died the same year Jemimah was born in 1724. Longworth’s widowed wife, Millicent, in 1727, married a Luke Thornton who was John’s older cousin. Luke took over the duties of helping Millicent raise her three young children. There is some logic to this connection because John and Jemimah Thornton named their first son, Luke, in honor of her stepfather. (To confused matters, John also had a younger brother and a cousin named Luke and his grandfather was named Luke.)

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