The Thornton Brothers
This post begins the biography of the Thornton brothers and one of their cronies, Samuel Stead. Benjamin Thornton in 1852 acquired land in the Vienna area from Reginald Fairfax. Between them, the Thorntons and Stead owned property in the Vienna area from 1852 to 1883. (See Figure 0).
Benjamin and Joseph Thornton come off as scoundrels from the vantage point of 150 years later, as they apparently did to some of their contemporaries, judging from the number of lawsuits and financial disputes they were involved in and, at least in Joseph’s case, the circumstances of his immigration to America.
Benjamin Thornton was born in 1816 to Thomas Thornton and Mary Thornton nee Davison at Gomersal near Leeds, in Yorkshire, England. Joseph, the younger brother, was born in 1817. Their father, Thomas, was a wool dealer in the Leeds area. Leeds had been a center for the wool industry in England since the 17th century and subsequently, courtesy of the industrial revolution, a major mill town with wool as the key industry. (See Figure 1).
Joseph Thornton Absconds from England and Arrives in America
Our Thornton biographies will start with Joseph Thornton, even though he was younger than Benjamin and owned our land of interest after Benjamin, because Joseph emigrated from England first, and under colorful circumstances. Like his father, Joseph went into the wool industry. His occupation in Britain was a “wool factor”; that is, a wool wholesaler. In 1844, Joseph married Ann Ross Pringle in the Edinburgh, Scotland area. Some records place the marriage in Haddington, in East Lothian to the east of Edinburgh. Haddington was the place of Ann’s birth to Andrew and Katherine Pringle in 1822. Other records place the marriage at Leith, Midlothian, which is on the Firth of Forth and now part of Edinburgh. Before they left Britain, Joseph and Ann had their first two children, both daughters.
Joseph emigrated from England in 1847. He left under a legal cloud that followed him to the United States in the form of an international manhunt of sorts. Reported a newspaper in Bradford, Yorkshire in mid-1847: “Considerable excitement has been caused in the mercantile circles of this town within the last few days, by reports of the absconding of several parties largely mixed up with the wool trade, and of course with the general trade of this district.” The parties included Joseph Thornton and his brother-in-law, Andrew Pringle. The men in essence cashed checks—largely from strawmen—at Scottish banks, who were to bear the largest share of the loss from the fraud, up to 150,000 pounds. A Scottish newspaper described Joseph and his three comrades, also in the wool business, as “The Absconded Wool-Merchants” who left “behind them liabilities in a very large amount…The general impression at the time of their absconding, was, that they had fled to America….”
The general impression was correct. An account in late 1847 in the New York Daily Herald, entitled “Arrest of Extensive Swindlers,” filled in the details of the scheme and subsequent developments in the United States. It was picked up by papers in New Orleans and Baltimore, reflecting the national interest that the story generated in the United States. According to the Daily Herald:
“It appears that about two years ago, four men, said to be relatives, entered into a secret confederacy in England, under pretence of carrying on an extensive wool business.” The men were Joseph Thornton, Andrew Pringle, Samuel Stead, and John Davidson, all of whom “were secretly allied to each other, although publicly strangers, in order to procure credit, which they succeeded in doing to an immense amount. However, last spring the creditors of these operators accidentally discovered something wrong when, after holding a meeting to investigate the solvency of the parties, it was resolved by the creditors to compel these men into bankruptcy,” under British law. “This was done, and a notice served upon each of these men, declaring them bankrupts. Receivers were duly appointed, and the 6th day of July [1847] was the time designated by the creditors to have the whole affair investigated. These men, finding themselves cornered, drew largely on the banks, and played into the hands of each other, by which process they obtained between three and four hundred thousand dollars from the banks and creditors; packed up all the books belonging to the concern, together with other evidences of debt, and on the 19th of June…all four took passage on the Caledonia, at Liverpool, for this country; arriving at Boston about the 4th of July.”
The New York Daily Herald added that when the British creditors learned the whereabouts of the men, they took legal action and dispatched an agent and an English officer to America. These two arrived in the United States in October “with all the necessary documents for the arrest” of the Thornton gang. The creditors’ men also hired two New York officers to help. “Immediate steps were taken to secure the parties” and a judge in New York issued warrants to arrest Thornton et al. The creditors’ “officers proceeded west, and a few days ago they succeeded in capturing three of the accused parties—two at Chicago and the other at Milwaukee, from whom a large amount of the money has been recovered. The parties are expected daily to arrive in this city, when the whole matter will undergo a full investigation by the magistrate,” according to the Daily Herald.
Joseph Thornton’s Encounter Of Sorts With Abraham Lincoln
Alas for the creditors, Illinois balked at sending the men to New York. In Illinois, the legal representation for the men included Springfield lawyer Abraham Lincoln. In correspondence with the Chicago attorneys Morris and Brown in October 1847, Lincoln offered his opinion that Governor French of Illinois ought to reject a request to apprehend the purported fugitives, referring to the New York warrants, on the grounds that the relevant affidavit was insufficient. Lincoln wrote Morris and Brown that he would try to get this opinion to the Governor. In the second of two letters on the subject in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1, Lincoln wrote to Morris and Brown:
“Your second letter on the matter of Thornton & others, came to hand this morning. …Logan…says that some time ago, a young man (who he knows not) came to him, with a copy of the affidavit, to engage him to aid in getting the Governor to grant the warrant; and that he, Logan, told the man, that in his opinion, the affidavit was clearly insufficient, upon which the young man left….If the Governor shall arrive before I leave [for Washington], Logan & I will both attend to the matter.” Lincoln added that he would forward to the Governor the papers that the Chicago attorneys had provided him “so that the Gov will, at all events have your points and authorities. The case is a clear one on our side, but whether the Gov. will view it so is another thing. Yours as ever A. Lincoln.”
Governor French’s decision was consistent with Lincoln’s argument. In November 1847, the Governor informed his New York counterpart in regards to Thornton et al that it was “my duty to withhold my warrant for their apprehension.” Governor French concluded that the affidavit from the English agent “seems to me to be clearly insufficient.” Intriguingly, Governor French also commented about Joseph Thornton and Andrew Pringle and presumably the claims in the affidavit that “the facts against them appear in a stronger light than the other two.”
Benjamin Thornton Comes to America
Benjamin Thornton followed his brother to the United States in 1848, the year after Joseph’s immigration. The motivation for Benjamin’s emigration from England is less clear than Joseph’s. More than two decades later, a Leeds-area newspaper noted that “[t]he two brothers, Benjamin and Joseph Thornton, formerly lived in Gomersal, but some years ago got into trouble there and went to America….” Had Benjamin in fact encountered enough trouble in England to prompt him to flee, or was Joseph’s tarnished reputation also tainting Benjamin’s as memories in England faded over details?
In England, Benjamin, like his brother, was a wool wholesaler. In 1846, the Leeds District Bankruptcy Court cited him for contempt because he had forcibly ejected two officers of the court who were attempting to seize the property of a third, bankrupted party. Thornton had claimed he had title to the property. Through his solicitor, Benjamin apologized to the court and to the creditors and threw himself on the court’s mercy. The court was indeed merciful, providing Benjamin with a warning that he could not claim ignorance in the future when it came to abusing its officers and requiring him only to pay the expenses of the inconvenienced officials. In 1847, the Leeds Mercury published an accusation that Thornton used an 11-year-old boy to help forge signatures on a church petition to Parliament in support of the government’s education policy. The clergyman who originated the petition sprung to Thornton’s defense in the next week’s edition of the newspaper, blaming the boy for a misunderstanding. The paper, in turn, defended its correspondent, noting pointedly “that the names of at least three individuals to whom B. Thornton applied, were attached by some one, and without their consent.”
Within weeks of Joseph’s flight to America in 1847, an English bankruptcy hearing for a J. Garner, “the bankrupt,” featured an allegation of a fraudulent scheme involving both Benjamin and Joseph. Garner claimed that at a meeting involving himself, the brothers, and John Davison—who subsequently joined Joseph in absconding to America— he, Garner, responded to a sketchy business proposal from Benjamin with, “I said I would not go into Bradford market to rob other people.” At this point, we get to observe Benjamin in his own words (or at least his purported words as recounted by a clearly unreliable Garner, judging from the details of his bankruptcy): “Thornton then said ‘You won’t; then damn you, I will knock your eyes out.’” Garner also made a distinction between Benjamin and Joseph in the former’s favor: he said he would accept bills for Benjamin, because they had value, but never for Joseph Thornton.
Garner’s accusation appeared in the Bradford Observer’s account of the bankruptcy hearing, prompting Benjamin to respond in a letter-to-the-editor. Unlike the case of Garner’s quotation, for these words we can be confident that they are Benjamin’s own, perhaps modulated by his lawyer:
“There is not one word of truth in what Garner is reported to have said respecting me….If the public knew the character of this man Garner, so well as unfortunately I know it, there would be no need for me…to say one word as to the value of his testimony, for like an evil spirit, his very name would be enough….My business transactions in Bradford have been heavy, consequently many respectable parties know me. From this cause, I can well afford to let my reputation care of itself, even though report with her empty head, and busy tongue, may run to and fro to tell her silly tale; and malice with her hollow hear, and open mouth, may aid her treacherous mission.”
Benjamin Thornton’s Connection to An American President
Regardless of the circumstances of 32-year-old Benjamin’s departure from England in early 1848, his initial experience in America was much more auspicious than his brother’s entry on the lam. Like Joseph, however, Benjamin’s start in his new country of residence had a connection to a great American historical figure. Benjamin arrived in the US on the Arcadia and apparently first settled in Richmond. And then, also in 1848, Benjamin Thornton bought Montpelier, the former estate of the founding father and fourth American president, James Madison.
Benjamin Thornton owned Montpelier until 1854. He made significant renovations to the house, according to archeological investigations of the structure. He was not an absentee landowner at Montpelier, unlike his later relationship to the Vienna land. Real estate deeds of the period refer to him as Benjamin Thornton “of Montpelier.” The 1850 American census places him in Orange County as a farmer. At the time, brother Joseph and his family lived with Benjamin at Montpelier, as did other Thorntons, according to census records. Joseph, too, was recorded as a farmer. “The Thorntons adapted the house to their purposes and restocked Montepelier with refined goods,” according to Matthew Gantert Hyland’s “Montpelier: The history of a house, 1723-1998.” Among the luxury goods they added were another $1,500 worth of plate and $4,000 worth of household and kitchen furniture. Their new outfit for the estate had a higher assessment than any other household in Orange County, according to Hyland. In 1852, the livestock—cattle, sheep, and hogs, apparently more than one thousand total—was valued at $3,000. As of 1853, the Thorntons had two $200 carriages and eight horses valued at $800.
Hyland’s research includes a finding that goes beyond the inherently dry nature of a list of material items: a visit of reporters to Montepelier and a positive encounter with the Thorntons. Hyland writes:
“The changes initiated by the Thorntons and their laborers attracted the attention of agricultural journalists. A contributor to The Southern Planter visited Montpelier in 1849 and described the Thornton farm for its readers…[T]he reporters ‘found the halls open and the proprietor’s welcome extended.’ They described the ownership arrangement as a partnership of the adult, male Thorntons, ‘…gentlemen from Great Britain.’ One of the Thorntons was on the premises and toured the visitors around the grounds for an agricultural inspection. The visitors were impressed: ‘If we mistake not the views of the gentlemen, they will soon have in successful operation the system of husbandry pursued in that part of the island where husbandry is the best. We mean the north of England and southern borders of Scotland, on the banks of the Tweed. That the system will be successful here in Virginia, it is rather bold to predict. Yet we do so….’”
But did the reporters smell some BS coming from the Thorntons? Because they caveated their prediction of success by adding, “The results of a future and more extended visit, with authentic information will be given, so soon as the proper time arrives.”
As for the basis of the reporters’ forecast of success, they explained it as “because of the adaptability of the lands to it, the reputed [note that qualifier!] experience of the proprietor as well as his expressed views, and the use mainly of slave labor.”
This explanation underscores that at Montpelier, Benjamin Thornton also adapted the worst of what his new country of residence had to offer: enslavement of African-Americans. When he bought Montpelier, he also bought the estate’s slaves. As of 1850, he owned 47 slaves, varying in age from one month to 40, according to Hyland. During Thornton’s ownership of Montpelier, the number of slaves declined at the facility, so that by 1854 there were only 12 over age 12. It would be nice to think that Thornton’s conscience played a role his reduction of the slave population, but given how he handled his other “property” over the years, as a source for cash, Hyland’s hypothesis is probably correct: Thornton most likely was selling the slaves in unrecorded transactions.
Hyland notes that Thornton also employed eight free laborers at Montpelier as of 1850, all living as tenants on the property. These included free
Blacks and an Irish immigrant. In the Southern Planter article, the latter is characterized as “an obliging Irishman” who “knows his business” and to whom the authors give credit for the garden being “already in nearly the best of tilth.”
In 1854, Benjamin sold Montpelier to creditors after he and Joseph used the property to secure multiple loans. However, he managed to retain ownership of the household furnishings and livestock, according to Hyland’s research.
The Thornton Brothers’ Business in America
Circa 1850, then, Benjamin and Joseph Thornton, former wool wholesalers, were farmers at a large Virginia estate. What other occupations did they subsequently hold? The documentary record provides differing answers. Or more accurately, multiple answers over time. After Benjamin left England in 1848, he advertised his “large, substantial, recently-erected” mill for sale, but he had not given up on sheep and the wool business after England and Montpelier. An early 1850s report in the Baltimore Sun about the Fairfax-Thornton real estate transaction indicated that Benjamin “intend[s] going largely into wool growing and raising barley. This immense tract is to be prepared for those purposes.” He also made forays into other business ventures. By 1853, for instance, Benjamin was among the commissioners—others included Joshua Gunnell—offering stock in the Great Falls Manufacturing Company. In 1854, the Great Falls Manufacturing Company purchased some 750 acres along the Potomac in Virginia, with ambitions to build water-powered factories at Great Falls. In 1858, those ambitions clashed with a government plan to build an aqueduct, resulting in a 30-year court case that the company ultimately lost. The company never built any factories.
The first evidence I’ve found of the Thornton’s use of at least the Reston land for lumber appears in an advertisement Benjamin placed in late 1853 in the Poughkeepsie Journal. (See Figure 2) He announced that in November he would offer at auction 4,500 acres from the Reston tract, divided into 100-acre farms, with “[t]he residue of the estate, about 4,500 acres…for sale by private contract.” His advertisement indicated that the Fairfax family had named the tract “The Reserve.” “Having been the ‘Reserve,” he noted, “there is, upon a large portion of this land, an immense quantity of valuable timber, of the original growth, consisting of yellow pine, white and red oak, chestnut and hickory.” Between late 1853 and 1855 Thornton sold off several parcels from his Reston land, most approximating the 100-acre size advertised in 1853 and most sitting along Lawyers Road between today’s Hunter Station and Fox Mill roads. His other sales in this period were on other extremities of the property, on the northern and western peripheries of his land. In the Vienna area, during this period he sold off the southernmost portion, 120 acres south of today’s Church Street and east of Lawyer’s and Courthouse Road.
In the meantime, the lumber business apparently took off. When the records specify, they only mention the Reston land; the records are silent on any uses to which he put the Vienna land as far as I can tell to this point. In 1857, “Benjamin Thornton, of Fairfax county,” shipped 300 tons of timber on the brig Wabash, which sailed from Alexandria to Liverpool, according to a newspaper account. The paper indicated that the shipment was the first-ever export of timber from Fairfax County to Liverpool, with 3000 additional tons in the offing for subsequent shipments. The 1861 English census recorded Benjamin’s occupation as an “importer of timber.” While Benjamin largely lived elsewhere, for instance returning to England (hence his appearance in the English census), Joseph lived on the Reston property and managed its lumber business on behalf of the family. Reflecting Benjamin’s role in the international trade of lumber, a later court proceeding indicated that Benjamin had borrowed money in relation to a contract to ship timber from the United States to France.
In the late 1850s, besides being a lumber baron, Benjamin Thornton had other roles. For instance, he was one of three partners in the Virginia firm Andrew & Thomas Pringle. Andrew Pringle being, of course, the brother-in-law who escaped England with Joseph in 1847. In several lawsuits against the partners for unpaid debts in Prince William County, Benjamin was still described as a farmer. And in 1859, after Benjamin had returned to England and married Margaret Reaney, 45, the daughter of an innkeeper in York, the English record of the marriage listed Benjamin’s occupation as “Gentleman.” (See Figure 3).
The characterization had been used less formally for both Benjamin and Joseph in 1846, when an English newspaper described them as among several “gentlemen” appointed to a commission evaluating conditions at a local poorhouse, another Dickensian echo in the lives of the brothers. During Benjamin’s visit back to England in 1851, the English census recorded him as a “coal miner.” Probably more precisely, an English probate record from 1890 characterized his profession as “coal proprietor.”
Benjamin Thornton Buys Land in the Future Vienna and Reston
The records easily available to an internet researcher don’t reveal what in 1852 brought Benjamin Thornton to middleman Joshua Gunnell to buy Reginald Fairfax’s 8200 acres in the Reston area and 453 acres in the Vienna area. In 1851, Benjamin had leased from Benjamin Chinn for $10,000 the manor house and 1500 acres of the Ben Lomond property in Prince William County, according to an online history of Ben Lomond. Then, in 1854, he sublet the property to the Pringles, who—with slave labor—ran herds of sheep and grew crops on the grounds for the remaining period of the 10-year lease, according to the online history and a Prince William County account of Ben Lomond. Perhaps that presence in Northern Virginia gave Benjamin some exposure, direct or otherwise, to the land he would ultimately buy in Fairfax County.
And perhaps the explanation for why Benjamin Thornton, “coal proprietor,” bought the Fairfax properties resides with railroads, given their relationship to coal. As of 1845, Benjamin Thornton was the director of the Liverpool and Leeds Direct Railway, according to the Leeds Mercury, confirming that Benjamin had a role in the railroad industry. In Britain, the speculative boom of the Railway Mania had peaked in 1845, and with the bursting of the bubble came broader economic trouble. For instance, bankruptcies in Britain hit a record high by mid-1846 and in 1847, several big banks failed on the same day. In the midst of the post-1845 slump, Thornton immigrated to the United States. As a “coal proprietor,” railway director, and young man in England, he could very well have made money in the coal & rail industries, seen the opportunities in Britain narrow with the railway bust, and perceived that in contrast, America with its less-developed rail industry was poised for higher growth. As was indeed the case. Investor spending on American railroads tripled between 1850 and 1860, and in the same period, rail miles in active service in the United States more than tripled.
Regardless of whether Thornton’s coal and rail background helped him to perceive the utility of the two Fairfax County tracts, a development in the Northern Virginia rail situation one year after his purchase almost certainly enhanced the value of the land. Interest in establishing a railroad from Alexandria to northwestern Virginia dated to 1847, according to Ames Williams’s history of the Washington and Old Dominion railroad. Translating this interest into construction was slow-going, however. The general route for the Alexandria, Loudon and Hampshire Railway Company—the original name of the W&OD—was not established until 1853.
Meanwhile, Benjamin was understandably tracking the situation. Late in 1853, when advertising in New York to sell the Reston land, Benjamin explained that “[t]he Alexandria, Loudon and Hampshire Rail Road will run right across this estate, and it is thought, very near its centre…..[B]y special agreement with the Rail Road Company, there is to be a Depot on this property [the future “Thornton Depot”], to which there will be opened convenient roads.” Construction on the railroad began in 1855, and by 1859 the line reached from Alexandria to Herndon. And Benjamin Thornton’s Reston land did indeed straddle the right-of-way, while his Vienna-area parcel sat astride it to the east around the town line, crossed over at what is now the Town’s public-works property, and extended down the west side of the future railroad to Church Street. As a 2020 study of the Reston land notes, by virtue of the railroad ending up in the midst of Thornton’s land, Benjamin and his brother benefitted because their lumber business had access to nearby, quality transportation. Benjamin also gained compensation from the railroad for the value of its takings for the right-of-way. Near Vienna, the gain was small, because less than a quarter-acre was involved. Thornton apparently received $5.00 for that parcel—a modest sum, even if four times what he paid for it. In contrast, he apparently earned more than $5000 for the 46 acres that comprised the right-of-way through his Reston property, judging from the recommendation of commissioners appointed to determine the value of the taking.
Benjamin Late in Life: Lawsuits and the Fate of His Land
Despite his wealth during his prime, Benjamin Thornton does not appear to have died a wealthy man. In 1877, a few years from his death, Benjamin Thornton, “iron ore merchant and coal proprietor,” lost his estate in Leicester County in England when the courts divided up the property for his creditors in accordance with British bankruptcy laws. Perhaps this was the last in the many legal actions involving Benjamin and his properties. In 1857 in the United States, the courts placed several attachments on his property in Fairfax County in connection with lawsuits from his creditors. After Benjamin returned to England, apparently in 1855, his activities there led to more lawsuits. He lost a suit accusing him of using a legal action to harass a creditor. English newspaper accounts of another lawsuit, involving 4,500 pounds and both brothers, with Joseph as the defendant, explained that the two brothers had acquired coal mines in Leicestershire in 1864. Benjamin, at the time still in England, managed the mines and borrowed money. (The Thorntons’ failure to pay back their related indebtedness of 50,000 pounds to the Leeds Bank was the primary reason for that bank’s failure in 1864, according to the Bradford Observer). As for the reason for the lawsuit itself, “The plaintiff in an evil day for him was induced by Benjamin, for a commission, to allow his name to be used” on some of the loans, according to the Leicester Chronicle. In 1865, the plaintiff, Mawson, pressed Benjamin to help him with the financial difficulties caused by the loan. Benjamin would not help; his liabilities at the time were over 200,000 pounds. Benjamin and Joseph disputed Mawson’s claims. With Joseph in the Untied States, Mawson had tried but failed to persuade American courts to take action. It was after this that Mawson had decided to sue Joseph in the English courts. At one point in the subsequent proceedings in England, Joseph’s attorney proposed a delay to bring Joseph from the United States to testify, arguing that Benjamin had duped Joseph. The judge in response signaled his opinion of Benjamin’s character. His lordship asked, “Is it any use calling [Joseph] to prove that his brother is a terrible rogue?” The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff and against the Thorntons in August 1874. Less than a month later, fires broke out twice within two weeks at an English mill owned by Benjamin. The second fire destroyed wool he was drying at the facility, with an estimated 800 pounds in damages. According to a newspaper account of the fire, “Mr. Thornton is insured in the County Fire Office.”
The Thorntons’ litigiousness borders on farce: at one point, Thornton was suing Thornton. In 1865, Joseph sued Benjamin in the Fairfax County Court for 2,500 pounds and requested a lien be put on Benjamin’s 8,000 acres in Reston and 453 acres in the Vienna area. One secondary source states that the suit was for Benjamin’s unpaid management fees owed to Joseph.
The key lawsuit in determining the fate of Benjamin’s Vienna land was filed before the Civil War. After Benjamin married Margaret in England in 1859, he did not return to Virginia until after the Civil War, in 1867. (For his return, he traveled from Liverpool to New York on the Tarifa, a relatively new ship of the Cunard line). In the meantime, in 1860, Reginald Fairfax sued the absent Benjamin Thornton. Under the 1852 land deal, Thornton had paid Fairfax for the land partially in cash, with $36,000 more due in eight annual installments, secured with a deed of trust on the parcels. Fairfax was suing to sell the land to collect the balance still owed by Thornton, because Thornton had missed some of his annual payments. Furthermore, Thornton had issued additional deeds of trusts on the land to secure other debts, the subject of those pre-1860 lawsuits. The result was a mess of what was owed to whom, and Virginia’s mid-19th century version of Dickens’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Thornton v. Fairfax et al. was not settled in the Court of Appeals of Virginia until 1878, long after Reginald’s death and shortly before Benjamin’s.
Early on, the court grouped the debts into 24 classes, with the principal and interest totaling almost $125,000, approaching triple the 1852 price of the land. Three of the 24 debts, totaling some $39,000, were subject to the scope of the suit. Fairfax’s death stalled the case, and presumably the Civil War didn’t help expedite matters, but Reginald’s executors revived the action in 1866. In 1866, the courts ordered the land sold, which was done before the end of the year, with the proceeds to pay the debts. Joseph Thornton was the purchaser. Within months of the sale, however, another creditor emerged, this time from England, with a claim on the proceeds from the court-ordered sale, requiring further inquiry by the courts and its commissioners. In 1873, the court established that Joseph had not yet paid some of the remaining debt subject to the suit and that he still had not paid in full for his 1866 purchase. The court ordered Joseph to pay the balance within sixty days or the commissioners would sell it at public auction. Joseph appealed. In 1878, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled against Joseph, affirming the circuit court’s decision, finally ending the case. At the time, a map of the area still labeled the property with the Thornton name. (See Figure 4).
Two years later, in 1880, Benjamin Thornton died of pneumonia at age 63 in Thornton, Virginia in the Dranesville District, almost certainly at his brother Joseph’s house. The house sat to the southeast of today’s intersection of the Reston Parkway and Sunset Hills Drive and north of the Toll Road. According to a British probate record from 1890, Benjamin’s personal estate was valued at 41 pounds.
Joseph Thornton Settles Down In America
After the drama of Joseph’s entry to the U.S and even with the various lawsuits, his later years seem more placid—lawsuits notwithstanding—and prosperous than Benjamin’s. Between 1850 and 1855, Joseph and Ann had three more children, a son and two daughters, to add to the two girls born in Great Britain. (Benjamin appears to have been childless. At one point in the 1850s, he had provided power-of-attorney to a Benjamin Thornton, Jr., but Junior was too old to have plausibly been our Benjamin’s offspring). As of 1860, the Joseph Thornton family had a live-in housekeeper from Scotland. By 1870, two domestic servants lived with the family at Thornton Station, as did Ann’s brother, the Thornton crony Andrew Pringle (single) and Catherine Pringle. Andrew was still in the household in 1880.
As were several of Joseph and Ann’s children. Mary, the Thornton’s second daughter, had died in 1867 at 19, but until the end of Joseph’s life and beyond, multiple adult children lived in the Thornton household. None of the children married. Wife Ann died in 1887. Joseph himself died in 1901. Ann, Joseph, and at least some of the children are buried in the Washington Street United Methodist Church Cemetery, part of the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex in southeast Alexandria. The house near Thornton Station survived until 1955. (See Figure 5).
Passport applications from Joseph’s middle age and early 70’s give a sense of his appearance. At 54, he was a 5’6”, blue-eyed, naturalized citizen with a full nose and face, a florid complexion, and dark hair. In 1889, at age 71, he described himself as having a forehead high and full, a “rather full” face with a “rather small” nose and medium mouth, hazel eyes, a fair complexion, and brownish-gray hair. He recorded his height as 5 foot 6 and three-quarters inches, a degree of precision in the upwards direction since the early 1870s, perhaps revealing some vanity.
For Joseph’s activities during his life and during the short period he owned the Vienna area property, court records are especially helpful, as we have seen, as they are with Benjamin. We know from the accounts of the Reston land that Joseph was involved in the lumber business, of course. The 1880 census lists him as a retired lumberman. From 1866 to 1869, when Joseph owned a good deal of Benjamin’s former land, he employed an agent to fell, saw, and process timber on the property. In 1873, Joseph sued this agent for failing to adequately account for his disbursements. Joseph believed that the agent “clandestinely used and appropriated the property…which was under his control, as his agent, for his own purposes and profit, without giving an account of the same.” (Joseph apparently won on appeal). Perhaps Joseph required an agent because from 1867 through 1869, if not after, he was the postmaster for the Thornton Depot post office. Meanwhile, as late as 1882, we have evidence that he still had a role in the lumber trade. A lawsuit from creditors (of course) sought, among other things, to restrain Thornton and his son Thomas from stripping probably the Reston property of timber and impairing the land’s value.
The lumber business brought Joseph into other matters. In 1868, he was responsible for reviving a maritime line between Alexandria and France. His plan was to load “the proceeds of forest on his large Fairfax estate” on ships at his wharf in Alexandria, according to the Alexandria Gazette. Son Thomas was to make an imminent trip to France to supervise the European business.
Joseph also invested in railroads. In 1866, he and Benjamin were among multiple parties, including the DC government, in a lawsuit over the rail line between Alexandria and Washington. This short line, the Washington, Alexandria, and Georgetown Railroad, had oversized significance in the east coast rail network, because it was as a key link between the recently warring North and South sections of the country. The original officers and investors had lost possession of the railroad to confiscation during the Civil War when they sided with the South. After the war, they tried to regain control of the railroad from the various parties, including the Thorntons, who were behind its new form, according to the Alexandria Gazette and court records. As far as I can understand the legal write-ups, it appears that Thornton et al eventually prevailed.
One last intriguing episode in the lives of the Thorntons. In 1872, the Alexandria Gazette reported, “It is rumored that Mr. Joseph Thornton, who owns a large tract of land, upon which is Thornton’s station, on the W&O.R.R, has gained a suit in England involving a very large amount, estimated as high as $1,000,000.” The number seemed to grow over the next five weeks, judging from a story in the Valley Virginian. “Mr. Joseph Thornton, a Virginian gentleman, has established his claim to $5,000,000 worth of property in England.” I have found nothing in the English papers to substantiate these stories, making me wonder if, for instance, the rumor about a $1 million English windfall was planted in the American papers by Joseph himself, as some sort of scheme directed at about-to-pounce creditors….
As for the Vienna-area land itself, in 1869 Joseph Thornton and his wife Ann sold 310 acres to Samuel Stead for $9300. Of the 310 acres, about 250 were east of the railroad; the remaining portion was west of the railroad and extended into the Town of Vienna down to Church Street.
Samuel Stead, a Thornton Postscript
Samuel Stead, you may recall, was one of the three men who absconded from England with Joseph in 1847. Another speculation follows, inspired by the Thornton’s other shenanigans. Considering 1) the circumstances of the 1847 flight from England, 2) the questionable dealings that the Thorntons appear to have been involved with over the years, and 3) the 1866 sale of Benjamin’s land to Joseph as creditors were breathing down Benjamin’s neck, one has to wonder about Joseph’s sale to presumed crony Samuel Stead. Were Benjamin’s sale to Joseph in 1866, and Joseph’s to Samuel Stead in 1869, stratagems aimed at keeping the land under Thornton control in the midst of the Fairfax suit?
This is a question unanswered, as are the details of Samuel Stead’s life. The press accounts of Stead’s absconding with Joseph Thornton refer to him as a manufacturer and more specifically as a “worsted spinner” from Gomersal. In early 1845, a few months before the flight from England and at the peak of the Railway Mania in Great Britain, he was among some 70 names calling a public meeting to discuss railway projects for their district in the Gomersal area. “Thornton, Brothers” were also among the names. The only Fairfax County real estate transactions with which his name is associated are the acquisition of the Vienna-area tract, the deed of trust for that purchase, and the later sale of the property. He was dead by 1880, judging from a notice in the Alexandria Gazette. The notice was from a creditor who held a note in Stead’s name and for the Vienna-area tract; it referred to Stead as deceased.
One of the few other details that remain about Samuel Stead is a gruesome offshoot from the absconding episode. In the fall of 1847, multiple American newspapers reported on the sad fate of Stead’s 45-year-old-wife, Mary. Mrs. Stead had arrived by train in Rochester, New York, en route to Milwaukee to rendezvous with her husband after he wrote to summon his family members. She was travelling on the “eastern emigrant train” with her two daughters, a son-in-law, two grandchildren, and a servant. The son-in-law left the railcar for the depot to ask about travelling further west. The railroad employee responsible for sweeping the cars then told the rest of the party to hurry to other railcars. The daughters and children exited off the railcar, “leaving the old lady on the platform,” as the Detroit Free Press so respectfully put it. As Mary herself was exiting, the train started moving, she lost her balance, and fell onto the tracks. “[T]he cars were set in motion, first forward, then backwards, and passed twice over her body, killing her on the spot,” according to one press account. The Free Press was more lurid: “[t]wo wheels passed over her body, cutting it nearly in two at the abdomen, and passing also over and crushing one of her arms. Her death must have been instantaneous.” The Free Press added, ignorant apparently of Samuel’s well-reported shenanigans, that “Mrs. Stead and family were very respectable people, and had been prosperous farmers at home” in Yorkshire. A Rochester paper explained that her remains “were removed to Barnard’s Hotel to be enclosed in a leaden coffin, her daughters wishing to bury her where they expected to settle at the west.” The inquest found the railroad company culpable, even though a number of jury members were in the employ of the company, according to a subsequent complaint from other jury members about the propriety of such membership. Meanwhile, “Mr. Stead has commenced an action against the railway company, and has laid his damages at 20,000 dollars,” according to the American press.
Interestingly, a different detail about Mr. Stead was included in a Manchester, England press piece on the incident. The paper cited as its source “a letter communicated by a friend in America” to the family’s relatives in Yorkshire. The Manchester article included similar details about the accident as in the American accounts, but then included the following about Samuel: “[t]he survivors expected to meet a living father. But judge the emotions and grief of the already bereaved family when they found themselves orphans—their father having recent died from inflammation, originating in a fractured arm.” An unintended garble from the anonymous-to-us-at-least letter writer? Or—I confess, I’m caught up in the melodrama surrounding the Thornton crowd in general and the train accident in particular —could Samuel Stead have seen an opportunity to use the incident to fake an account of his own death for creditors back home in Great Britain?
[Sources for this article include: Alexandria Gazette; Ancestry.com (including the Chaplin family tree); Baltimore Sun; Bradford Observer; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1; Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, Volume VII, Executive Series, Volume II: Governors’ Letter-books, 1840-1853; Detroit Free Press; Historic Records Center of the Circuit Court of Fairfax County; Matthew Gantert Hyland, “Montpelier: The history of a house, 1723-1998”; La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History, Jan88; Leeds Intelligencer & Yorkshire Advertiser; Leicester Chronicle; Library of Congress (Hopkins Map); Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner; The New Orleans Times-Picayune; New York Daily Herald; Newspapers.com (for most papers cited here); nps-vip.net, “Ben Lomond Manor House”; Norfolk Landmark; Poughkeepsie Journal; Public Ledger (of Philadelphia); pwcgov.org, “Ben Lomond Historic Site”; Valley Virginian; Reston, A Planned Community in Fairfax County, Virginia: Reconnaissance Survey of Selected Individual Historic Resources and Eight Potential Historic Districts”; Thornton v. Fairfax, 70 Va 669, 29 Gratt. 669 (1878); Washington Union; Ames W. Williams, Washington & Old Dominion Railroad, 1847-1968; Washington City Savings Bank v. Thornton et al, 83 Va 157 (1187) Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.]