Chapter One (1753-1785): A Tale of Two Properties, Lancashire and Tortola; and a Scientific Education
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
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| 6. Tortola in 1798 divided into sugar plantation |
In 1753, William Thornton's father, also named William, arrived in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. Like many Quakers in Lancashire, England, west of Manchester and flanking the Irish Sea, he was brought up to be a merchant. His uncle James Birket had made a fortune based in Antigua and likely encouraged him to go to Tortola because it had a Quaker community that Birket help found. Marriage vows in 1757 gained the emigrant Thornton plantation land and slaves that came with a Quaker wife named Dorcas Downing Zeagers whose sister was married to John Pickering, the richest man on the island and also a Quaker. On that small island, 3 miles by 12 miles, 10,000 slaves worked for and served 1,000 whites. At that time, Quakers were not banned for owning slaves. William Thornton was born in May 1759.
Thornton's father died soon after his second son Absalom was born in 1760. In 1764, William and Absalom were sent to their father's Uncle Birket in England to get a Quaker education. Upon reaching their majority, the brothers would share the Tortola estate. Birket did not them forget their Tortola roots. While he had consolidated his wealth in Lancaster, he sometimes joined the trading ventures of his nephew Dodshon Foster, for a while the most successful slave trader in the port of Lancaster. Birket also arranged for the education of Thornton's cousins, Robert and Myles Foster. Robert was four years older than Thornton and one might say that he paved Thornton's way through Lancashire's Quaker schools.
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| 7. Old Customs House in Lancaster built as Thornton grew up in and around the city |
That seemed to work to Thornton's disadvantage because his cousin shined in ways that Thornton couldn't. Robert's better command of Greek and Latin was the least of it. By 1775, as Birket explained in a letter to Robert, "Billy and Absy" had "not improved to my expectation." They had at least chosen their future careers: "Billy has determined to be a Physician and Absy a Merchant.”
Then cousin Robert dazzled the extended family with a brief career of fame or infamy followed by glorious redemption. He had also wanted to be a physician, then in 1772, he went to Antigua where his father and Birket arranged for him to apprentice with a store keeper. He primarily oversaw slaves about to be sold. In 1775, he broke his agreement with his master. By breaking his agreement, he forfeited the right to be a Quaker, as did his next move. In 1776, he shipped out on a British navy brig to capture privateers from the revolting colonies who were attacking the profitable West Indian trade. He rose to the rank of lieutenant and commanded a ship.
The shock Foster gave his great uncle likely increased Birket's worries about the Thornton boys or at least William. Absy soon returned to Tortola. There had been changes there and the Thornton brothers' patrimony had been diluted. In 1766, their mother remarried. Her second husband signed an agreement that provided for the boys' education and half of the estate would be theirs to share once they came of age. But that husband died within a year of marriage. In 1773, she married again. Her new husband, who came from the neighboring island of St. Croix, wanted to become the boys' guardian which worried Birket because the new husband also invested in and expanded the plantation. He soon had his own son, James Birket Thomason. Still, the agreement remained, but when Thornton came of age, his fortune would be diminished by the addition of not only a step father but also a half brother. To bide his time until he reached his majority, in June 1777, Birket apprenticed him for four years to work in Dr. John Fell's village apothecary shop in Ulverston, Lancashire.
In the fall of 1779, Foster returned to Lancaster and humbly asked to return to the Quaker fold. Birket wrote in his diary "Robert Foster came home this morning after a long fighting campaign in sundry Men of War. He quitted the fighting trade at his grandfather's request, and seems to be a very sensible youth." He hoped to captain a merchant ship, but then he accepted his grandfather's offer to manage a Yorkshire estate. He lived and worked with the farm hands. Humility, discipline and willingness to help others were traits prized by the Quaker community. In April 1780, he attended the Kendal Quarterly Meeting with Birket. By May 1781, he was accepted again as a Quaker. The 27 year old man hardened by war who returned professing the desire to work a farm and work for and with the community moved hearts.
Thornton's reaction to the naval exploits of his second cousin are not known. However, he spent the summer of 1781 working on an engraving of Caesar Augustus with "Thornton" written below in Greek. His reaction to Foster's return to the Quaker fold came soon after.(1)
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| 8. Augustus with Thornton written in Greek |
In 1781, freed from what he thought was the "chain" of being an apprentice, Thornton set his sights on becoming an M. D. and a gentleman. Money from Tortola paid Thornton's way at Edinburgh's medical school which allowed him to lark with poets before he matriculated. They noticed his privileged status. The Quaker poet Thomas Wilkinson, who was eight years older than Thornton, described his vision of Thornton and himself: “I doubt not when I hear Dr. Thornton keeps his carriage and country house and his hours set aside every week to subscribe to the poor gratice, that I shall be ready enough to let it be known he was once my friend, for my part I believe I shall never be a greater man than I am, but I don't mind...."(2)
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| 9. Thomas Wilkinson's cottage |
But there were limits on Thornton's freedom. Quaker discipline relies on Quaker overseers. During the ensuing winter, Thornton received a letter from Birket excoriating his behavior during the summer. In a letter to Wilkinson, Thornton quoted his great uncle:
“I was told the other day by a Friend who had been at Kendal Quarter Meeting that he had seen a Friend from Penrith side, who told him that thou hadst behaved whilst at Penrith very badly in sundry aspects, keeping but very improper company, being out at nights, and to one offered half thy estate if he would go with thee to the West Indies. These complaints have affected me exceedingly. Are these the returns thou makest me for all my care, concern and anxiety for thee, and the advice and council carefully given thee this 14 or 13 years.”
Shaken, Thornton sought the consolation of Wilkinson. “Many people endeavor to destroy the peace of others having none themselves,” Thornton wrote and then proved that he had read the epistolary novels that were the best sellers of the day. “Oh! I am hurt – I am troubled – I am afflicted beyond everything. Who could be so malevolent as tell such things to my uncle? I think any person who knows my disposition perfectly will give him a much better account.”
Thornton did not deny the allegation. Wilkinson replied promptly and did not address the allegation. He commiserated with Thornton's other news. His brother Absalom had died in Tortola. Wilkinson urged Thornton to see his brother's death “as a visitation of mercy, a profitable admonition for us to enter and pursue the same path of virtue, that like them we may close our eyes on this world with comfort, then I trust we shall open them on our dear removed friends in the blissful kingdom of peace...."(3)
Other thoughts likely crossed Thornton's mind after the death of Absalom. His fortune had suddenly doubled. In light of his prospects in 1777, his apprenticeship to learn a trade had seemed a punishment. In 1781, the death of his brother made leveraging a profession out of his education less of a necessity. But in his 22nd year, he wasn't foolish enough not to embrace his new found freedom since he moved to Edinburgh. He boarded with Quakers and went to meeting every First Day. But in Edinburgh, population 40,000, the Quaker community was rather small. He could escape their discipline. No one in Edinburgh mistook him as religious. During his four years at the apothecary shop, on his own time, he had read voraciously, and developed a natural talent for drawing. He was good-natured, talkative and especially liked to socialize with wits who could pull snatches of poetry out of the air. Because of those talents and his money, he was not overwhelmed by Edinburgh.
He joined nearly 500 fellow students of medicine. Most of them were younger and “vulgar” which made it easy for him to stand out. However, given that he rarely practiced medicine after he left Edinburgh, it is fair to say that the celebrated faculty there did not inspire him to become a physician. He did take a shine to the sciences. Ten year after leaving the university, he sought appointment as a professor of chemistry in Philadelphia, but didn't get the job.
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| 10. Medical Students became very familiar with the Edinburgh Infirmary |
For two years, October to May, medical students had to attend lectures in six courses: chemistry, botany, medical practice, materia medica, medical theory, and anatomy. Among the vulgar, anatomy was most popular. In 1785, there were 399 students in the anatomy class.(4) Given his talent for drawing and his poet's eye, Thornton was bound to shine in natural history. That was a day when to draw a plant was to know it. He didn't introduce himself as a Quaker lad from Lancashire. He was a planter's son from the Island of Tortola, which was bound to pique any natural historian's interest. He joined other students with artistic talent to create a student society in natural history. Student societies prepared M.D. candidates for writing and defending a thesis which was required to get the degree. Thornton presented a paper to the society. “On the Preservation of Birds” was all about embalming them. He also became a member of the Antiquarians of Scotland which was not limited to students. He presented the same paper to them. His interest in opium might have informed the thesis he began writing on sleep in both plants and animals. Not writing about clinical medicine was acceptable. Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, an older cousin also born in Tortola who would mentor Thornton, wrote on the natural history of the tea tree, "Observationes ad vires Theae Pertinentes"(5)
Thornton's non-medical activities proved to be as important to his future success. By tradition, distinguished gentlemen in Edinburgh and environs reached out to meet and entertain foreign students at the medical school. The young man from Tortola evidently became a favorite.(4)At the end of classes in the spring of 1782, he toured Fife with a scholar afire with poems in Gaelic. Thornton hit on the idea of a shorthand to record the unlettered bards. When he completed courses in the spring of 1783, he hobnobbed at the castles of the great men of the Antiquarian Society, head of the Clan MacDonald and the like, who soaked themselves in Scottish lore.(6)
Just after his classes ended, the illness and death of his great uncle did brought him back to Lancaster. He arrived too late to see him, but boasted of his effort to get there in a letter to Sir Ludovick Grant, 6th Baronet of Dalvey: "I was only about fifty-two hours in going from Glengairy to Lancaster which is three hundred miles, including the four hours that I slept and was on horses all the way except seventy miles. I lived chiefly on opium all the time for if I eat or drank anything it would not towards the latter part of the journey stay upon my stomach. I recovered my dreadful fatigue in three days perfectly, and have had my health very well since; my looks would indeed tell you so if you beheld me now."
Birket's death made part of Wilkinson's vision a reality. Thornton inherited “properties” in Lancaster. However, Robert Foster inherited the better half of their great uncle's property. Then, Thornton proved himself the more magnanimous legatee. He signed over the income from his Lancaster properties to his grandmother and two aunts to enjoy during their lifetime. The properties he inherited were not something one would give away without a thought. Years later in a letter to James Madison, he valued the property at $40,000.
In a 1795 letter to Dr. Lettsom, Thornton regretted giving away a fortune. His Quaker mentor replied: "... I believe thee a comparatively happy man because a virtuous one. The very act and manner of disposing of thy property to thy relatives, if I had been an old rich old grandpapa, would have induced me to lay a crown at thy feet were I in possession of one. It is an act that will ever enable thee to lay down thy head in peace." Actually, losing that resource continued to gnaw him. In 1800, when the Tortola plantation paid out no money, he prevailed upon his Aunt Jane to send him almost $1,000 to cover his pressing debts. His debts persisted and he sold the property. That also gnawed him. In May 1811, Robert Foster's sister, who cared for Aunt Jane, shared news of her death. Thornton himself was soon at death's door.(7)
That the plantation would not payout likely never crossed Thornton's mind when he gave away income from the Lancaster property. In 1783, Thornton was under the influence of a baron who owed his noble rank to the slave trade. Sir Ludovick's brother Alexander Grant had established the baronetcy by restoring an old title. He was trained as a physician but made his fortune as a slave trader owning plantations in Jamaica and an island off Sierra Leone from where slaves were shipped. Then he established himself in London and Scotland. When Alexander died, Ludovick assumed the title and presumably had not discountenance his brother's slave trading.
In the fall of 1783, Thornton followed the well worn path Edinburgh graduates made to London hospitals and Paris clinics that put the finishing touches to a doctor's education. Thornton wrote his long letter to the baron toward the end of his studies in London. That letter could have offered biographers a valuable report on Thornton's medical education. Instead Thornton was eager to report his prospect of marrying in Tortola and possibly increasing his fortune with more sugar plantations and slaves.
He described his joyful meeting with his stepfather in London who had come for the London social season. Thornton moved in with him and enjoyed the Tortola colony wintering in London. Through him, Thornton met the governor of the Virgin Island, a close friend of his step-father's. Another close friend offered the hand of his daughter to Thornton as well as a 10,000 Pound dowry. “My father's consent was asked," Thornton informed Sir Ludovick, "he freely gave it, for, from his long acquaintance with her, he knew her disposition to be one of the best. Her fortune though a very good one is not an object with me (were it indeed there are 2 in our small island of dozen times the fortune)..."(8)
While in London, many medical students put finishing touches on the thesis that they had to submit and defend in order to get their M.D.. But Thornton also checked to see if his paintings measured up to London standards. He met young painters then in vogue. Someone did his portrait or he did a self-portrait of his London look. He has a chic wig, smart cravat and holds a book with a gloved hand.
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| 11. "Dr. Thornton of London" |
Not a few Edinburgh graduates confessed that they learned more about the practice of medicine in London than they did in Edinburgh. They did the rounds in the hospitals of one of the largest cities, population 750,000, and sickest cities in the world. Thornton did bond with a doctor in London. Dr. Lettsom was a fellow Quaker, Tortola born and related to Thornton by their mothers marrying into the richest family on the islands. Lettsom was also raised and educated in England. By 1784, he was well on his way to becoming one of the famous physicians of London. He was lauded for visiting 60 poor patients a day during the London flu epidemics of 1786-1787. He also had a passion for botany. The doctor's estate outside the city had a notable garden.
In a 1787 letter to another British doctor, Lettsom would extol the virtues of the “excellent Thornton.” He was delighted with Thornton's talents as a naturalist and artist. Lettsom had those talents too but his practice came first. He recognized Thornton as just the man to refresh what memory he had of Tortola's flora by making drawings for a book he had wanted to write, the “Flora Tortoliensis."(9)
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| 12. Dr. Lettsom and Family in his Garden |
Thornton never doubted that he would return to the island to see his mother. Lettsom hoped he would soon return to London. However, Thornton's mentor sowed the seeds that led to Thornton becoming an American. What brought Thornton to America was an anti-slavery crusade. Taking a cue from a 1791 letter, Thornton's biographers credit his Quaker upbringing for inspiring Thornton to fight for that noble cause. In that letter, he credited Quakers "who instilled early into my mind the sweet lessons of humanity, who planted the seeds of benevolence, and taught me the beauties of Christianity. I love them as the parents of every good thought I enjoy,..."(10) However, Thornton did give away property without slaves to live off property with slaves.
Not until he met Lettsom did it strike Thornton that his owning slaves was problematic. Upon the death of his father, Lettsom, then 23 years old, had returned to the island, took control of his inheritance, and freed his slaves. He absorbed that loss of 500 Pounds by practicing medicine on the island. He made 2000 Pounds in six months, gave half to his mother and returned to London with ample funds to start his practice there.
However, in 1783, Lettsom was not an unabashed abolitionist. He patronized activists working against the slave trade, but he had learned to regret rashly freeing his slaves and had come to believe that slaves had to be prepared for freedom, with one exception. They could be sent back to Africa. Lettsom introduced Thornton to an African explorer, Henry Smeathman, who had spent several years on the coast of West Africa in the 1770s. He wrote a monograph on the termites of Africa. His illustrations of termite houses delighted Enlightenment society.
Another Quaker doctor, John Fothergill, had patronized Smeathman's first African trip. Before he died in 1780, he asked Smeathman about the feasibility of establishing a colony of freed slaves in Africa. Although Fothergill had in mind transporting blacks in London, that idea came from America.
Pennsylvania Quakers slowly began freeing their slaves in the 1750s. John Woolman's pamphlet on slavery published by Benjamin Franklin in 1762 sped up the process, but it was not until 1774 that Pennsylvania Quakers had to free their slaves in order to remain Quakers. What slowed emancipation was the conviction of many Quaker masters that, as their slaves, blacks would be happier than they would be if they were free.
A 1771 book by Anthony Benezet, a Quaker school teacher in Philadelphia, amassed evidence showing that contrary to the widely held belief, slaves were not lucky to have been forced to leave Africa. That continent was only unhealthy and dangerous for whites. If left alone, blacks would prosper there. He argued that arrangements should be made to send slaves back to Africa.
Fothergill had told Smeathman that 10,000 Pounds Sterling could be raised from his fellow Quakers to effect such a plan to repatriate a group of former slaves starving in London. During the late war in America, the British government guaranteed their freedom if they defected to the British side. Most were taken to Nova Scotia and then many of them taken to London. After Fothergill's death in 1780, Smeathman began to lobby Lettsom to support the idea.
Lettsom was thoroughly entertained by the naturalist who brought Africa to life in ways that Benezet's collection of eye-witness accounts didn't. Smeathman knew that a naturalist needed the help of natives. He had married daughters of two African kings. It was Smeathman, not his Quaker upbringing nor Lettsom, that kindled Thornton's interest in abolishing slavery.
Despite the immediate prospect of a rich Tortola bride. Thornton told Sir Ludovick that he wanted to round out his medical education in Paris and Leyden. Lettson arranged for Thornton to stay with the famous Paris surgeon Le Sue “to perfect himself in the language and in his art.” Presumably Lettsom meant the art of medicine, not painting. He also gave Thornton a letter of introduction to Benjamin Franklin. He introduced Thornton as “a student of medicine and a young gentleman of fortune from Tortola,” and added, “I think he will make a distinguished character; he has at present too much sail, but age will give him ballast."
Dr. Fothergill, the previous most famous Quaker physician in Britain and Franklin's good friend, had helped American medical students, especially Quakers from Philadelphia. After Fothergill died in 1780, Lettsom assumed that role. He packed off not a few to Paris to meet Franklin and such mentoring often involved lending students money. His describing Thornton as a gentleman of fortune was apropos and a relief for Franklin.
Once in Paris, Thornton was soon distracted from medical studies. His published letters and papers don't mention the famous French surgeon Le Sue. There is also no evidence that he was distracted by architecture. In 1802, Thornton wrote that when traveling in Europe he had never paid attention to architecture.
He met Smeathman again at Franklin’s salon where the American sage told the African explorer to go to Boston to find free blacks who wanted to return to Africa. As Smeathman put it in a letter to Lettsom, "Dr. Franklin tells me he has no doubt that I should get it adopted at Boston; but, alas! I cannot carry my poor brat a-begging from continent to continent on uncertainties."(11) Thornton loaned Smeathman money so he could return to London at the behest of a committee organized to send the city's blacks to Sierra Leone. He also gave him a small gold watch that needed to be repaired. Smeathman knew just the man. He was a jeweler and a naturalist. Obligation to his medical studies kept Thornton in Paris.
Thornton never revealed how he got the gold watch. However, he was an ever popular and comely young man, 5 feet 8 inches tall and around 160 pounds. He soon struck the fancy of the Comtesse de Beauharnais, who hosted a salon. She was almost 50 years old and unhappily married. She wrote a poem about him; he painted her portrait; there was an effusion of love letters that would so shock the future Mrs. Thornton that she burned them. She recalled years latter that "the adoration” the comtesse “expressed amounted almost to impiety."(12)
A yen to become a student of mineralogy saved Thornton from the allurements of Paris. The French geologist Barthelemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, famous for his theory on the origin of volcanoes, got a loan from Thornton and he persuaded the young Edinburgh student to join him on a natural history tour of England, Scotland and the Hebrides. They were joined by an Italian count, a continental medical expert on syphilis, and James Smithson, a young man who would later endow the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
In his memoir of the trip, Faujas lauded Thornton's powers of observation and zeal. When the others flagged on the way up an ancient volcanic mountain, Thornton made it to the top. He also had local knowledge. In Newcastle, he had a good friend who was not only an enthusiast for nature and art, but also provided “opportunities to examine mines and several manufactories.” Most exciting to Thornton was Faujas' discovery of poussolane deposits which could be used in making cement. Thornton contemplated commercial mining with Faujas and the expert on syphilis.(28)
Meanwhile, not only did Thornton not complete his thesis but he lacked one course, botany, to satisfy his degree requirements. In the late fall of 1784, Thornton returned to Edinburgh to save the day. He enlisted the help of the Natural History professor. Dr. John Walker, who was a clergyman not a physician, had become a good friend. The University of Aberdeen did not have a thesis requirement for M.D.s. Walker wrote to Aberdeen extolling Thornton. He had satisfied all the lecture requirements at Edinburgh except botany. He could not do that because he had to return home to the West Indies. There was no mention of his thesis. Aberdeen awarded him the degree. Evidently, Thornton did not even have to make an appearance.(29)
Thus ended Thornton's European education. The Quaker lad from Lancashire connected with Scottish and French aristocracy, won the admiration of at least one professor and Dr. Lettsom, and left a good impression everywhere. In 1795, Lettsom would write to George Washington and extol Thornton as a man with "a heart—an openness, a candour, and an ingenuous disposition; that, I think, are more amiably combined in his character, than in any I ever knew." Those were kind words, but he called Thornton "ingenuous" which Samuel Johnson defined as "open, fair, candid, generous, noble." He didn't describe him as ingenious, which Johnson defined as "witty, inventive, possessed of genius."
Judging from his letters, he had two troubling relationships. Faujas went back to France before repaying Thornton for his loan and Smeathman did not return the gold watch he promised to get repaired. But those two were the most dynamic of Thornton's acquaintances. In a letter of introduction to Franklin, Lettsom described Smeathman as "ingenious."(30) Thornton likely found their intrepid natures inspiring. He was not ready to practice medicine or teach. He also likely understood that his birth in Tortola made him stand out among his peers. A least in the short term, Tortola likely seemed the place to find a measure of fame. There he would also find out how much he was worth and have much time to think about what to do with his life.
To prepare for his return to Tortola, he went to Lancaster to make his goodbyes. He found that his friend Wilkinson had walked off to London to attend the Quaker Yearly Meeting. Wilkinson never described his 300 mile walk in the winter, but what he saw in London changed the rest of his life. English Quakers followed American Quakers in disapproving and then outlawing the ownership of slaves by members of the sect. But there were very few slaves in Britain, and the sect did not embarrass merchants who profited by trading staples like sugar that were harvested by slaves.
In 1783, British Quakers formed a committee to abolish the slave trade but Wilkinson seemed unaware of it. Then in London, he saw “the almost naked and prostrate negro, at many a corner. At first glance we hardly conceive it to be a human being.” If he had money, he wrote, he would build an asylum for “the old or disabled negro.”
At the Yearly Meeting, he bonded with Quakers from Philadelphia. The delegation included not just the usual merchants rich enough to make the voyage, but also two ecstatic women who were afire with the cause of ending the slave trade, a sin that Americans blamed on the British.(31)
Back in Lancaster in late February 1785, Thornton finally got around to replying to a letter Wilkinson had sent in August. His reply made one thing evident. Other than returning to Tortola for a visit, Thornton still did not know what he was going to do for the rest of his life. His letter mainly addressed the momentary problems of mutual friends who were poets. He joked about Isaac "because I'm afraid the dose of opium I gave him last night will lay him in eternal rest."
Then he made some light self criticism: “My letters are, to be sure, well filled in general, but thats all. I give in quantity what other sober thinking folks can give in very little room in quality.”
His conversation had that same characteristic. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and his wife lived next door to Thornton from 1820 to 1825. In a November 22, 1820, letter to her father-in-law, Louisa Adams wrote: “Dr. Thornton called in late last Evening and chatted some time. His conversation is indeed a thing of threads and patches certainly amusing from its perpetual variety—He is altogether the most excentric being I ever met with possessing the extremes of literary information and the levity and trifling of the extreme of folly—He is good natured rather than well principled.”
Louisa Adams was not a narrow minded New Englander. She had been born and raised in London where her father had been the American consul. She evaluated Thornton by London standards. Juxtaposing Thornton's confession in his 1785 letter to Wilkinson with her observation made 35 years later gives some context for the sudden transformation of Thornton into a crusader. His mind played with the surface of things. He was too vain an opportunist to anchor his rhetorical flourishes in the profound. He had too much sail and never found his ballast.
Once Thornton got to London to prepare for his journey home, he bumped into Wilkinson who was still pulsing with the anti-slavery testimony he had heard at the Yearly Meeting. Smeathman had given Thornton the information and words to respond to his friend. Wilkinson wrote in his diary that he was gratified to hear Thornton's warm opposition to the slave trade.(32)
Go to Chapter Two
Footnotes to Chapter One
1. Jenkins, Charles F., Tortola: A Quaker Experiment of Long Ago in the Tropics. Friends Bookshop, London, 1923 pp. 23, 58; Correspondence of James Birket; Harris, Papers of William Thornton, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi; an on-line biography provides the same material, Paulson pp. 7 - 11; Beck, Ben, Foster Family Webpage .
2. Kelliher, Hilton, "Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwath, Friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge" p. 149; Papers of William Thornton, p. 1, Wilkinson to WT, 22 November 1781
3.Papers of William Thornton,WT to Wilkinson 5 March 1782; Wilkinson to WT, 13 March 1782.
4. Bell, Winfield, “Philadelphia Medical Students in Europe 1750-1800, Penn. Mag. Of Hist. And Bio, Jan ;1943, pp. 9, 10; Papers of William Thornton , WT to Benjamin Rush, 11 September 1793.
5. Papers of William Thornton,WT to Grant, December 1783; Harris p. 21, WT to Wilkinson
February 1785; Jenkins, pp. 47-50; Pettigrew, A Eulogy on John Coakley Lettsom, 1816 (Google Books) pp. 5;
6. Harris, p. 13;
7. WT to Madison, 2 September 1823; Papers of William Thornton, Lettsom to WT, 5 March 1796; For Aunt Jane's transfer of money see "Mrs. Thornton's Diary", Journal of Columbia Historical Society, vol 10, 1907, p. 216, November 28, 1800. She sent 230 Pounds Sterling in 1797 letter WT said the rate of exchange was $1 equals 4 shillings and 6 pence. Harris p. 419.
8. Legacies of British Slavery, "Sir Alexander Grant" ; Papers of William Thornton, WT to Grant, December 1783.
9. on WT in London, Harris p. xxxix; Allen Clark, "Doctor and Mrs. Thornton," p. 147 (JSTOR); on Lettsom, Jenkins p. 48, Woodruff, A.W., "Lettsom and his Family in Tortola," 7 June 1972; Paper of William Thornton, Lettsom to WT 25 july 1792.
10.Papers of William Thornton, Harris, WT to Wilkinson, 31 July 1791.
11. Jenkins, pp. 48, 60; Coleman, Deidre, Henry Smeathman, the Flycatcher. Liverpool University Press, 2018, p. 24; Pettigrew vol. 2, Smeathman to Lettsom, 16 July 1784, in Pettigrew vol. 2, pp. 268ff; Pettigrew was the source for the letters collected by Harris. JCL to Franklin, 28 Jan. 1784:
12. Harris, p. xl; "Mrs. Thornton's Diary", p. 144; on size see 7 May 1808, Washington Federalist p. 3; In an 1821 letter to Jefferson soliciting support for his being sent on a personal diplomatic mission to South America, Thornton claimed that "the celebrated Countess de Beauharnois solicited for me, through the medium of the Duke de Penthievre, from the Court of Spain, Letters to Mexico. But I was refused admission into the Spanish Territories." In the same letter to Jefferson, he claimed that "while I was a Student at the University of Edinburgh, also in London & Paris, I was anxious to see the commencement of the Revolution of the South Americans, for I thought them under the most miserable & despotic Government."WT to Jefferson, 9 January 1821. In his later years Thornton had a tendency to exaggerate.
28. Faujas, B., Travels in the Hebrides and England,p. 134 (Google Books); Harris, p. 20.
29. Harris, p. xl
30. Lettsom to GW, 15 July 1795; Lettsom to Franklin, 2 August 1783
31. Carr, Mary, Thomas Wilkinson: A Friend of Wordsworth, p. 8, 9.
32. Harris, p. 20; Louisa Adams to John Adams, 22 November 1820
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