Cheesy Grits: Updates on the sailmaking business and the DAR application

W.H. Auden ruefully observed somewhere that "poems are never finished; only abandoned." He should have tried family history, which you can't possibly finish but can't really abandon either because of all the new information that keeps coming along.



The past week has been no exception: Jane was visiting New York City, which she does on occasion as it reminds her, Connecticut Yankee that she is, somewhat of home. I can never resist giving her a little family history assignment when she takes these trips—not that she minds, as she has tasted the joy of discovery herself so many times in these matters.

So what are we working on in New York City currently? As I just mentioned a post or two ago, the Thorne family name originated in New York in 1765 with the birth of John Gardner Thorne, who after the Revolutionary War went into the sailmaking business in Charleston.

So who was his family in New York? Were they the Thornes who helped found Flushing, NY, and were co-signers of the Flushing Remonstrance, or another branch of the Thorne family altogether?

The only clues we have for John Gardner Thorne's New York past are his date of birth (30 May 1765), the observation in his epitaph that he was born in New York, and the death notice printed in the New York Evening Post in December, 1820. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable to presume that he was still sufficiently well-known in New York that the New York Evening Post thought it worthwhile to note his passing, even though it happened in Charleston. So it seems extremely likely that he still had family there. But how to find them?

With those few facts in hand, Jane stopped in at the wonderful New York Public Library in Bryant Park and the even more wonderful Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy Reading Room. I've been there several times, but it was her first visit, and she loved it. She was particularly taken by the generosity of time and concern on the part of the library staff, even though we have so little information to go on for John Gardner Thorne.

Of course, there were no state or local vital record requirements when John Gardner Thorne was born. To the extent that there were vital records, they are most likely in church registers and family bibles and the like. But at this point, we don't even have any idea which church registers to begin looking at. So that part of our search came up empty.

New Info on the Sailmaking Business

But a bit of serendipity did nevertheless come our way, in the form of more information about John Gardner Thorne in Charleston. The librarian who was helping Jane did a brief search of historical newspapers and came up with two notices about John Gardner Thorne's sailmaking business that neither of us had seen before.

The first is a notice in Charleston's City Gazette and Daily Advertiser dated 5 November 1788 that reads:

N O T I C E.

The subscriber returns her sincere thanks to the customers of her husband Thomas Stewart, late of Charleston, sail maker, deceased, and informs them that she has entered into copartnership with John Gardner Thorne, under the firm of THORNE & STEWART; she therefore solicits a continuance of their favors in that line, as every attention will be paid to all persons who will be so obliging as to employ them, and execute with fidelity and dispatch, on the most reasonable terms, at their sail loft on Cochran's wharf.

Mary Stewart 

 N.B. As an advertisement has appeared in the Daily Advertiser, on the 25th of last month, signed Mary Stewart, setting forth that I had declined to carry on the sailmaking business any longer,—I do declare, that the said advertisement was published without my knowledge or consent, and hope the public will pay no attention to the same.

Mary Stewart

This is the earliest notice I've seen so far of John Gardner Thorne's entry into the sailmaking business. Charleston was the busiest Atlantic port in the South, and sailing was hard on sailors, ships and sails. Ripped sails were a commonplace, so nearly every ship that made port was a potential customer for sailmakers. We don't yet know where John Gardner Thorne learned the trade, but he learned it well enough to become a very prosperous man. (I'm also on the lookout for an old map of Charleston that shows all the old wharves, so we can see where the Thorne sailmaking shops were.)

The second notice was the formal public notice that John Gardner Thorne had taken his son John Stocks Thorne into the business and that henceforth, the firm was to be known as John G. Thorne & Son. This notice was published on 7 February 1810, which was actually before John Stocks Thorne purchased and manumitted Becky and their son Tom.

The DAR Application

When thinking about John Gardner Thorne's move from New York to Charleston, I wondered if the Revolutionary War had had anything to do with it. Thorne was born in 1765 and so would have been in his late teens during some portion of the war—just the age that armies love. So I wondered if he fought and where he might have fought. And if he did indeed fight in the Revolutionary War, I wondered if Jane would then qualify to be a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution—the prospect of which had us both howling with laughter. After all, we both fondly remember going to DAR Constitution Hall to see Dizzy Gillespie, who knew exactly where he was standing when he stood on that stage—the same stage that had been denied to Marian Anderson. He relished it and we stood and cheered.

Now where was I? Oh yes: comes now another hit on a search for John Thorne. An immigration and passenger list search showed that a John Thorne had landed in South Carolina in 1782. But then I checked the source of the information. It was from a volume entitled Deserters and Disbanded Soldiers from British, German, and Loyalist Military Units in the South, 1782, compiled by Clifford Neal Smith.

Loyalists?! Was John Gardner Thorne a Loyalist during the Revolutionary War? Did he desert his post, or was his unit disbanded?

Whatever the case, it looks like we may have to put the application to the DAR on hold for the time being—unless the DAR is now accepting people whose ancestors fought for the wrong side.

Stay tuned.