William Thornton Re-examined by Bob Arnebeck

The Dr. T Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol by Bob Arnebeck Table of Contents 15. Quaker Grave Yard at Fat Hog Bay, Tortola In May 1785 , Thornton left London, but he seeded the laurels that might crown his return. The day before he boarded a ship to Tortola, he sent  two embalmed ptarmigans from Scotland and some geodes to Sir Joseph Banks . He asked him for seeds of Alexandrian senna which Banks had told him might grow in Tortola. He closed by asking Banks' “commands to a country which contains so very ample a field for observations and study.” With the Comtesse Beauharnais, he preferred to couch his return with touching sentiment. He was going to Tortola to see his mother who he had not seen in 21 years. To men of affairs like Sir Ludovick Grant, he added a touch of noblesse oblige: “my property will require my paying a visit there.” Of course, the Pleasant Valley sugar plantation had been doing quite well without him on th...

Chapter One: A Tale of Two Properties by Bob Arnebeck     Table of Contents     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 helped 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. Quaker Meetings would not ban slave owners until 1776. 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 Unc...