Chapter One (1753-1785): A Tale of Two Properties, Lancashire and Tortola; and a Scientific Education [Pages 14 to 27]

Table of Contents  page 14  Index

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, William, Sr., was brought up to be a merchant. Like not a few Quakers, he ran afoul of that sect's strict rules. His Meeting blessed his decision to go to Tortola. That small slave-ridden island, 3 miles by 12 miles, was hardly a blessed island in Quaker eyes, but some had been there for forty years and were soon blessed with much money. Marriage vows in 1757 gained the emigrant Thornton land and slaves that came with a wife named Dorcas Downing Zeagers whose sister was married to the richest man on the island and also a Quaker.¹ William Thornton, Jr., was born in May 1759.

Thornton's father died soon after his second son Absalom was born in 1760. By the laws of inheritance, his sons would inherit his property when they came of age. In 1764, they were both sent to their father's relatives in England to get a Quaker education supervised by William Thornton, Sr.'s, uncle James Birket. He had never married and had been a rich West Indian trader². After an active career in the islands, he helped establish the Quaker meeting in Tortola.³ He also made a voyage to America, and sometimes joined in trading ventures of his nephew-in-law Dodshon Foster, for awhile the most successful slave trader in the port of Lancaster. Birket acquired property in Lancaster. He also assumed support of his sister, Thornton's grandmother, and two of her unmarried daughters Mary and Jane, Thornton's aunts.

Birket also arranged for the education of Thornton's second 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. 

7. Old Customs House in Lancaster built as Thornton grew up in and around the city

[page 15] Although not a few became rich, Quakers prized the simple life. They coalesced as a sect in the late 17^th century to escape the outward show of both the Catholic and Anglican churches and the doctrinal damnation of Puritans and Presbyterians. They preferred silence. They did not spoil their children nor raise them with any sense of entitlement. Children shared the burdens of work and discipline which meant they had to learn more than the ABCs. Both the Foster and Thornton boys went to schoolmasters who taught them Latin and a little Greek. When Quakers did speak or write, quotes from the Bible anchored their thoughts.

In a 1775 letter, their great uncle updated the progress of the Thornton boys in a letter to Robert Foster: “I took thy cousins Billy and Absy Thornton from Yealand where they have been five years, but have not improved to my expectation, shall send 'em next week to Geo: Bewley's school at Kendal. Billy has determined to be a Physician and Absy a Merchant.” ⁴

Robert had also wanted to be a physician. Instead, in 1772, he had gone to the Caribbean islands where his father and Birket arranged for him to apprentice with a store keeper. He gained his first acquaintance with the slave trade. In 1775, he broke his agreement with his master and opened his own store on another island. He wrote home asking for a gun and bayonet. 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. By breaking his apprentice agreement, he forfeited the right to be a Quaker. His father was more grieved by that than by the death of his other son.

The shock Foster gave his great uncle likely increased Birket's worries about the Thornton boys. In June 1777, he apprenticed Thornton, then 18 years old, to Dr. John Fell, a member of one of the oldest Quaker families. When other boys went off to war, Thornton worked for four years in Fell's apothecary shop in Ulverston, Lancashire. That village was not far from two temptations, the big seaside city of Lancaster and the river side village of Yanwath where poets dwell. Thornton gravitated to the poets and brought his easel and paints. He excelled in the arts [page 16] that can grace leisure time.

Meanwhile back in Tortola, the boys' mother remarried twice. Her second husband signed an agreement preserved the boys' property rights. 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. The middle name could be taken as a recognition of his mother's respect for the man overseeing the education of her sons in England, or the father's hope that Birket would take care of his son, too. The agreement remained: the money from the plantation would buy the Thornton boys a good education in Britain. Once of age and done with their education, they would share ownership of half the Tortola plantation.⁵

In Thornton's letters and papers there is no mention of his cousin Robert Foster. It is unlikely Great Uncle Birket shared news of his naval exploits with the Thornton boys, but he did write to them when the prodigal son returned. In the fall of 1779, Lieutenant Foster left a ship under his command, 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.⁶

Thornton's reaction to the naval exploits of his second cousin are not known. However, Thornton spent the summer of 1781 working on an engraving of Caesar Augustus with "Thornton" written below in Greek.⁷ 

8. Augustus with Thornton written in Greek

Nor do we know his reaction to the equally famous return of his second cousin to the Quaker fold. Perhaps envy of the prodigal sparked a rebellion. Before matriculating at [page 17] Edinburgh's medical school in October 1781, Thornton spent much of the summer with his poet friends in Yanwath and villages nearby. Thornton became a good friend with the Quaker poet Thomas Wilkinson, who was eight years older than Thornton.⁸ In a November 22, 1781, letter, the poet 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....”⁹

9. Thomas Wilkinson's cottage

Money from Tortola paid Thornton's way at Edinburgh which allowed him to lark with poets during the summer before he matriculated. But there were limits, and spies to see if he kept within them. 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.”¹⁰

[page 18] 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....”¹¹

Wilkinson evidently did not write to Birket and give him a better account of Thornton. In a previous letter, Wilkinson had warned Thornton to “have nothing to do with daughters of iniquity.”¹² Maybe he was more hopeful than trustful of the disposition of his friend. Thornton's conscience had to deal with another trait prized by Quakers. Thee should speak the truth.

Then in his 22nd year, Thornton found freedom when he moved to Edinburgh. He boarded with Quakers and went to meeting every First Day. But the Quaker community in Edinburgh was rather small. He could escape their discipline. He had considered his four years in the apothecary shop a “chain,” but 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.

The city of 43,000 had most of the virtues and all the profitable vices of London, population 750,000. In London, fashion tempted young men. In Edinburgh, what would be called common sense philosophy, explained the vicissitudes of life. Common sense also informed the medical school. Its clinically based, philosophically rigorous curriculum attracted students from Europe and the Americas, Virginians raised on rhetoric as well as Pennsylvanians who preferred facts.

Thornton 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.¹³

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. The justly famous chemistry professor Dr. Joseph Black was sometimes faulted for too much rhetoric and not enough information applicable to medical practice. That likely suited Thornton.¹⁴

Medical students were encouraged to take other courses. 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 [page 19] which was not limited to students. He presented the same paper to them. 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.

As for more strictly medical matters, judging from later letters, Thornton was most fascinated by the use of opium and medicines derived from it. He became adept at prescribing opium for himself and friends both to remain alert and pain free or, if needs be, to attain a death-like slumber and wake becalmed.¹⁵ His interest in opium might have informed the thesis he began writing on sleep in both plants and animals. Concentrating more on science in general rather then clinical medicine was acceptable. The theses of two M.D.s who played a role in Thornton's future show the range of interest. Benjamin Rush wrote "On the Digestion of Food in the Stomach" and John Coakley Lettsom wrote on the natural history of the tea tree, both in Latin, of course: "De Coctione Ciburom in Ventriculo" and "Observationes ad vires Theae Pertinentes."

Several physicians who Thornton would meet in Philadelphia left a record of their experiences and impressions of Edinburgh, but Thornton didn't. When he was there twenty years earlier, Benjamin Rush attended secret meetings that turned him against the king.¹⁶ In an 1821 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Thornton would recall 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."¹⁷ In that letter to Jefferson, Thornton was seeking support for his being sent on a diplomatic mission to foment rebellion in Latin America.

But evidence generated at time suggests that seven years before the French revolution, he was more interested in Scottish poetry. At the end of classes in the spring of 1782, he toured Fyfe 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.¹⁸

After he graduated, the death of his great uncle did brought him back to Lancaster. He page 20 arrived too late to see him, but boasted of his effort to get there in a letter to Sir Ludovick Grant, 6^th 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.¹⁹

Birket's death made part of Wilkinson's vision a reality. Thornton inherited “properties” in Lancaster. While Robert Foster inherited the better half of their great uncle's property, Thornton was the more magnanimous legatee. He signed over the income from his Lancaster properties to his grandmother and two aunts to enjoy during their lifetime. In a January 1783 letter to Foster, Birket had mentioned that he had written a long letter to Thornton. Perhaps he urged Thornton to care for the ladies. No letters Thornton wrote to his relatives at that time are extant.

The properties he inherited were not something one would give away without a thought. Their grounds were extensive enough that when Thornton got to America he ordered seeds "to plant in my grounds in England." He wanted hundreds.²⁰ Years later in a letter to James Madison, he valued the property at $40,000 but admitted that he sold it for $20,000 in order to pay debts.²¹

In a 1795 letter to one of his Quaker mentors, Thornton regretted giving away a fortune. His 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."²² In 1795, Thornton needed money to invest in real estate, perhaps build his own house. A few years later he was importing English thoroughbreds. He did prevail upon his Aunt Jane, his longest surviving relative, to send him money, up to $1,000 in one installment to cover his pressing debts.

Thornton's stake in the Tortola property was not so valuable that it made the income from the Lancaster property easy to sign away. Just before he died in 1828, he estimated its value: "a sugar plantation in Tortola containing 120 slaves, with buildings, stock capable of making 120 hogs. of sugar of rum etc. worth 6,000 Pounds²³ but say 3000 annually or 1,000, half coming to me." One thousand pounds then exchanged for about $4,400.²⁴  Since the world's sugar binge had had a lull in the 1820s, the plantation was probably worth more in 1783. 

At that time, Thornton was under the influence of a baron who owed his noble rank to the slave trade. Sir Ludovick's brother Alexander 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.²⁶

[page 21] Meanwhile, 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 after he had been in London for several months. That letter could have offered biographers a valuable report on Thornton's London education. Instead Thornton was eager to report his prospect of marrying in Tortola and possibly increasing his fortune with more sugar fields 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 Grant, "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)...”²⁷ This may seem a strange letter from a young man who would later boast that at the time he was afire for revolution, but Thornton and the baron had much of the status quo in common.

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 briefly 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.

 

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, hence sickest, cities in the world. Thornton only spent four months there. 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 time, he would confess to Thornton that his one fond memory of the island was tarrying on the shores Sea Cow Bay with Thornton's mother, then presumably between her second and third [page 22] marriage.

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.”²⁸

12. Dr. Lettsom and Family in his Garden

Thornton never doubted that he would return to the island to see his mother. She never left the island and he had not seen her since 1764. As he put it in his letter to Sir Ludovick Grant: “I shall then return to my native country which I have not seen since my infancy. I do not mean to stay long there, but my property will require my paying a visit there, and some stay, as well as my natural desire to see my own dear mother.”

There was no hint that he would then press on to America to foment revolution. However, despite his being a hard working London physician and despite hoping Thornton would be one too, Lettsom 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,...”²⁹ However, during his time grieving the passing of his Quaker mentor, Great Uncle Birket, 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.³⁰

However, when Thornton met Lettsom in London in 1783, the latter 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 [page 23] 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.

His childhood experiences in Tortola gave Lettsom an empathy for blacks. When he landed in England, just five years old, he startled and pleased onlookers by dancing just the way slave children on the island did. 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, but that happened in Paris where Smeathman worked the salons of Paris trying to raise money.³¹

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.

The world famous scientist and American diplomat was the recipient of not a few letters of introduction. For example, in 1780 John Foulke from Philadelphia came with five. The letters came from men with other news to communicate to Franklin, but they also noted Foulke's “abilities and application to his studies,” or his “Whig principles” or that he was the son of Judah Foulke.³² Lettsom 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 [page 24] present too much sail, but age will give him ballast.”³³

Dr. John 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, Lettson 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.

Thus ended Thornton's British education, and one may well ask what any of it had to do with his future in Washington. During his rambles in Scotland, Thornton saw, visited, and even drew some castles. But give Thornton credit for never alluding to them as inspiration for his Capitol design. In Washington, he would meet an old stonemason who claimed to have built some castles and who also claimed to be a friend of Sir Ludovick Grant. Thornton would find the old mason  "irksome" and do his mite to get Collen Williamson fired.³⁴

13. Thornton Sketch

Once in Paris, Thornton was soon distracted from medical studies by Smeathman and Paris society. 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.³⁵

Years later, Thornton only mentioned two conversations he had with Franklin: on the survival of toads in cold weather and the electrical properties of lava glass. But he met Smeathman again at Franklin’s salon. Smeathman primarily came to Paris to see if he could raise money for another trip to Africa, this time to colonize free blacks.(36) Franklin told him that he should go to Boston. 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."(37)

[page 25] Adding to the allure of Smeathman was the ease with which he changed from African liberator to a defender of Britain. The Montgolfier brothers were dazzling Paris with their hot air balloon experiments. Smeathman saw the limitations of their balloon design, and sketched out an idea to shape a flying machine more like a bird. He thought his idea so brilliant that his memoir about it could only be read by a select few and only to prove his priority to any inventions arising from his ideas. Then he sent it to Lettsom to forward it to the Royal Society where proper support could be found to make sure Britain led the world in matters of flight. A dissertation “On Balloons” remains in Thornton's papers and feeds his biographers' to  make much of his inventiveness. But give that some context. Don't forget John Foulke. He worked with the Montgolfier brothers and soon exhibited the first unmanned balloon flight in Philadelphia. His friends hailed him, not Thornton, as the Montgolfier of America.(39)

Thornton loaned Smeathman money so he could return to London. 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.(38) Obligation to his medical studies kept Thornton in Paris. Thornton never gave any credit to Smeathman for influencing him, but likely the older man taught him the power to ideas and drawings in the salons of Paris, and how to search for  patronage in Paris salons. 

By all accounts Thornton was always popular. He was a comely young man, 5 feet 8 inches tall and around 160 pounds.(40) He soon struck the fancy of  the Comtesse de Beauharnais, who hosted a salon. She was almost 50 years old and unhappily married. Paris being Paris, their relationship led to poems and 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." In that 1821 letter to Jefferson, 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." At that time, he claimed, he was a student of mineralogy. Thornton evidently presented himself more as a painter, poet and naturalist, than an M.D.. He did her portrait.(41)

                                              14.  Smeathman's Drawing of Termite Hills

Then another naturalist made an offer Thornton jumped at. The French geologist Barthelemy Faujas de Saint-Fond 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 [page 26] 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.”(42) 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.⁴³

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.⁴⁴

Thus ended Thornton's European education. The Quaker lad from Lancashire connected with Scottish and French nobility, 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."⁴⁵ 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.⁴⁶ Those two were the most dynamic of Thornton's acquaintances. In his letter of introduction to Franklin, Lettsom described Smeathman as "ingenious."⁴⁷ 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 [page 27] England, 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.”

Meanwhile 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 preachers who were afire with the cause of ending the slave trade, a sin that Americans blamed on the British.⁴⁸

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.”⁴⁹

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.”⁵⁰

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, who made much of his English upbringing, 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.

 

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  p. 58

2 Harris, p. xxxv

3 Jenkins, p. 23

4 Correspondence of James Birket

5 Harris, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi; an on-line biography provides the same material, Paulson pp. 7 - 11

6 Beck, Ben, Foster Family Webpage

7 Harris. p. lxxvi

8 Kelliher, Hilton, "Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwath, Friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge" p. 149

9 Papers of William Thornton, p. 1, Wilkinson to WT, 22 November 1781

10 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Wilkinson 5 March 1782,

11 Papers of William Thornton, Wilkinson to WT, 13 March 1782

12 Papers of William Thornton, Wilkinson to WT, 22 November 1781

13 Papers of William Thornton , WT to Benjamin Rush, 11 September 1793

14 Bell, Winfield, “Philadelphia Medical Students in Europe 1750-1800, Penn. Mag. Of Hist. And Bio, Jan 1943, pp. 9, 10

15 Papers of William Thornton,WT to Grant, December 1783; Harris p. 21, WT to Wilkinson February 1785.

16 Corner,  George W., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush: His Travels Through Life together with his Commonplace Book for 1789-1813. Princeton University Press, 1948 p. 46.

17 WT to Jefferson, 9 January 1821

18 I have been unable to review Thornton's notebooks which likely trace his whereabouts. Wilkinson visited him in the spring of 1782 and then wrote to Thornton in August. That letter that suggests Wilkinson had not seen Thornton since then.

19 Harris, p. 13

20 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Humphrey Marshall 3 Nov. 1787

21 WT to Madison, 2 September 1823

22 Papers of William Thornton, Lettsom to WT, 5 March 1796.

23 Jenkins, p 61, evidently quoting Thornton's will. For Aunt Jane's transfer of money see Chapter Fifteen

24 In 1797 letter WT said the rate of exchange was $1 equals 4 shillings and 6 pence. Harris p. 419.

26 Legacies of British Slavery, "Sir Alexander Grant"

27 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Grant, December 1783

28 Paper of William Thornton, Lettsom to WT 25 july 1792

29 Papers of William Thornton, Harris, WT to Wilkinson, 31 July 1791

30 Jenkins, page 40

31 Smeathman to Lettsom 16 July 1784, in Pettigrew vol. 2, pp. 268ff; Pettigrew was the source for the letters collected by Harris.

32 e.g., Timothy Matlack to Franklin, 21 April 1780: 

33 JCL to Franklin, 28 Jan. 1784:

34 Gordon Brown, Accidental Architect, p. 5; Commrs to Randolph, 13 July 1795.

35 Jenkins, p. 60: Harris p. 573. He wrote that in a saved draft of a letter to Dr. Fell. In 1808 when boasting of his credentials in his feud with Benjamin Latrobe, he claimed "An acquaintance with some of the grandest of the ancient structures..." See Chapter 17.

36. Coleman, Henry Smeathman 2018, p. 24

37. Pettigrew vol. 2, Smeathman to Lettsom, 16 July 1784, p 270.

38. Harris, p. xl

39.Trimble, High Frontier: History of Aeronautics in Pennsylvania, p. 5

40.Mrs. Thornton's Diary, p. 144 (JSTOR document); 7 May 1808, Washington Federalist p. 3.

41. WT to Jefferson 9 January 1821; Harris, p. xl

42,Faujas, B., Travels in the Hebrides and England, p. 134 (Google Books)

43 Harris, p. 20.

44 Allen Clark, "Doctor and Mrs. Thornton,"  p. 147 (JSTOR)

45 Lettsom to GW, 15 July 1795.

46 Harris, pp 16-20, 292,

47 Lettsom to Franklin, 2 August 1783

48 Carr, Mary, Thomas Wilkinson: A Friend of Wordsworth,  p. 8, 9

49 Harris, p 20

50 Louisa Adams to John Adams, 22 November 1820