Migration to North Carolina, around 1787

As noted earlier, the Owen families had land in Wilkes County, NC and had already settled in when several of the Thornton families decided to move south. The only records of their move are census reports to show who was where and when. Reconstructing the events is speculation. One possible scenario would be for William and Patsy to travel with his parents Luke and Martha, grandfather John and grandmother Jemimah [In their late 50s], uncle Josiah and his wife, William’s brother John, and a relative named Thomas Thornton. Their route would be by way of the popular Wilderness Trail, south of Lunenburg to western North Carolina. They traveled about 150 miles before they arrived at the Owen homestead in Wilkes County.

After a visit with the Owens family, the Thornton clan continued traveling about 30 miles south into the next county, Burke. This area is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountains. In some ways the land was much like the area in Lunenburg County but with steeper hills and valleys populated with even more rivers and streams. Waterpower from the many rapids and waterfalls was especially good for saw and gristmills. The land was mostly red clay and poor for farm crops except for growing potatoes. Apparently this area appealed to William and Patsy because they settled north of the Catawba River, near Horse Ford ferry landing. At that time Burke County was more than three times the size it is now.

William’s parents, grandfather, brother and others in the Thornton family may have paused to help William and Patsy get settled but they continued through North Carolina into the northern part of South Carolina, near the town of Spartanburg. The 1790 census for Spartanburg lists several of William’s family: grandparents John and Jemimah [ages 75 & 66] with one other female, parents Luke and Martha [ages 55 & 53] with two males under 16 and two females, brother John [age 25 who was not married to Elizabeth Crow at that time] with one male under 16, and a brother or cousin or uncle Thomas with four males and 2 females. William’s Aunt Jane was married to Arthur Hutchens and also listed in the 1790 Spartanburg SC census with one male over 16, four males under 16 and 4 females. Jane’s records are in the publication History of Jane Thornton of Spartanburg. Also listed in the census are William’s uncle Josiah Thornton with his wife Sarah Fowler with two males under 16 and five females. Patsy’s uncle William Owen and his wife Tabatha Crews joined the Thorntons as they continued to Spartanburg. They are listed in the 1790 and 1810 census for the area.

William’s brother John married Elizabeth Crow, whose family was in Spartanburg when John and the other Thornton families arrived.  John and Elizabeth had six children. John died in 1840 in Pickens, Alabama, and Elizabeth would live another 10 years.

Back in Burke County, William and Patsy settled down for about 10 years in the backcountry. There is a good chance that they were not farmers. The Thornton men seemed to favor working with mills in their lifetime and Burke County was an appropriate place for this kind of operations. In the census and tax records there is no acreage listed for William, indicating that his occupation was not farming but possibly mining or working with mills. When William is listed in the Burke County Land Records it is to oversee roads north of the Catawba River near Silver and Gun Powder Creeks. Records show that the area, in addition to waterpower, was good for mining magnetite and hematite, and limestone for fluxing.

After two years of marriage, within a year of two after they arrived in North Carolina, William and Patsy’s first child, Sally was born in 1789. When Patsy became pregnant with their second child, they were surprised with twins, born October 8, 1792. The boy was given his father’s name, “William,” and the girl was given a variation of her mother’s name, “Patsy Martha.” As the first born male child “William Jr.” was his official name, but on his tombstone in the Thornton Cemetery he is identified as just “Willi,” more appropriate for someone living in the backcountry of North Carolina.

When Willi and Patty were born, his father was 27 years old and had been in North Carolina for about 6 years. Typical for families living in the would be to build a house made from native logs. Houses would not be permanent structures as those built by other earlier emigrants from England; such as the fieldstone houses the Friends built in Delaware, or saltboxes the Puritans built in New England, or the more formal wood framed house in Virginia.

There are some log houses still standing in Burke and Lunenburg County. They are small structures with logs cut flat on four sides and stacked to make the walls. Mortar stuffed with rocks and wood would fill the spaces between the logs. Under a low, front porch would be a door in the center and a window on each side. Later records show that the Thornton families built log cabins when they settled in DeKalb County, Missouri, probably with plans based on homes built in Virginia and North Carolina.

Instead of settling in for permanent residence in North Carolina, sometime at the beginning of the nineteenth-century the Thornton family decided to move further west into Kentucky.

Records show that several families joined the Thorntons during their migrations from Virginia to North Carolina to Kentucky and finally to Missouri. Early migrations of families tended to become a movement of clans that included members of several families. During the Thornton family migration west there was a growing closeness between the various families that lived in the community. There were many romances started between William’s family and members of the other families who lived close to the Thorntons. These early unions lasted a lifetime.

The Todd Family

The most important family connection with the Thorntons for more than 170 years was the Todd family. Both the Thornton and Todd families were living in the western part of North Carolina in the last part of the eighteenth century. It is not known if they met with the Thornton family while the Todds lived in Rowan County 60 miles away, but future meetings would create some very close bonds.

The Todds had been in the United States for at least 100 years earlier. The earliest Todd found is John who was born around 1619 in Eling, Southamptonshire, England and married Elizabeth Mallory. His son Joseph migrated to Pennsylvania in late seventeenth century and died there in 1699. The direct line progressed through Joseph Jr., Joshua, and John, born about 1705. John must have moved to Easton, Northampton County Pa in the early eighteenth century, where his son Benjamin was born in 1725.

Benjamin and his wife Sarah Griffin were married in 1750 and had nine children, all born in Easton, PA between 1752 and 1764. Sarah could trace her line back to her great grandfather, William Buckman, who emigrated from England with William Penn on the ship “Welcome” in 1682. They migrated to Rowan County, North Carolina, where Benjamin and sons Caleb and Peter are on the 1772 tax roll. At the time they settled in North Carolina, Rowan County extended into western NC to the edge of Burke County.

When the Revolutionary War started, four of the Todd boys participated. Peter served in Captain Robert Moore’s North Carolina militia on an exhibition against Cherokee Indians. Joseph was a private in the militia in 1772. Benjamin Jr. served 8 months in 1777 with Captain Davis’ Company as a private in the militia. Thomas volunteered for 14 months in Captain David Cowan’s NC militia. Close to the end of the Revolutionary War in 1781 Thomas served as a substitute for his brother Benjamin. He spent two more months as a private in Captain James Straig’s Company of Light horse under Col. Davis in the NC Troops.

Peter Todd is the direct connection with the Thornton family. In 1779, following his service in the War, he married Hannah Cornelison who was born in Loudoun County, Virginia. Peter was a wealthy landowner, with 150 acres on the south side of Lick Creek and 400 acres on the Abbott’s Creek, in a section of Rowan County that later became Davidson County. It was too far from Burke and Wilkes County for the Todds to be considered neighbors of the Thornton and Owen families.

While Peter and Hannah Todd lived in Rowan County, they had 8 children between 1780 and 1795: Aaron in 1784, Mary “Polly” in 1786, Griffin in 1788, William in 1789, Anna in 1790, Jesse in 1792, Sally “Sallie” [our connection] in 1793, Jeremiah in 1795, Hannah in 1798, and Spicey, 1800. Even with all this activity in having children, the Todd family was preparing to move to Kentucky.

Next Page: Migration to Kentucky