Cheesy Grits: John Stocks and Rebecca Thorne's Children

To refresh: we're exploring Jane's great-great-great-great-grandfather's family in Charleston. His name was John Stocks Thorne and his common-law wife was Rebecca, whom he purchased (along her child who was John Stocks Thorne's son) for $600 and then three weeks later, set free. She lived with him as his wife and bore him four more children. So in total, John Stocks and Rebecca Thorne had five mixed-race children: John, Thomas, Philip, Caroline, and Susan.

What do we know so far of what became of their children?



From the testimony given in Rebecca's 1848 court case against Richard Fordham, the executor of her husband's estate, we learn that two of the five children had already passed away by the time the case was brought: Thomas, who was purchased from Mordecai Lyon with his mother, died in 1827;  Susan, who had married a Free Person of Color named Samuel Marshall, died in 1845, leaving her husband and two boys: Thomas, age 4, and Joseph, age one month.

So that leaves us with John, Philip, and Caroline.

John Thorne

John Thorne (b. 1812) makes his first appearance in the federal census in 1850, where he is shown as being the head of the household that he and his wife Sarah and possibly a son John are sharing with his younger brother, Philip and family. John is identified as a tailor, which was a common artisanal occupation amongst Charleston's Free Persons of Color. He seems to have been successful at it, as by 1861, he's established as the owner and occupant of the house at 17 Cannon Street in Charleston. He and his wife also have had a daughter named Alice.

The 1870 census and 1872 Charleston City directories find that the family has grown: daughter Alice has been joined by sisters Mary and Julia. Alice's Freedman's Bank account record notes that she is a student at the Avery Institute, Charleston's first accredited secondary school for African-Americans that was founded in 1865.

Alice Thorne's application for an account at the Freedman's Bank.
That's the 12-year-old Alice's signature at the bottom.

According to the South Carolina Death Records, Mrs. Sarah Thorne, age 58, of 17 Cannon Street in Charleston, passed away on 23 Aug 1873 and was buried in the African Cemetery (Note to self: another of Charleston's abandoned cemeteries? where was it? Must look up in Chicora Foundation report about Charleston cemeteries.)

John Thorne passed away in 1875 and was buried in the Lutheran Colored Cemetery at 76 Columbus St. in Charleston, the same cemetery where his mother had been buried about a decade earlier.

I don't yet know who John Thorne's wife, Sarah, was. It was very much the pattern amongst Charleston's mixed-race Free Persons of Color that they were, well, cliquish, so it would be no surprise at all if his wife were from another of Charleston's elite free families of color.

Caroline Thorne

John Thorne's younger sister Caroline is a good example of this clannishness of Charleston's elite families of color: she married into the Dereef family, the patriarch of which was Richard Dereef. Before the Civil War, Richard Dereef was one of the richest Free Persons of Color in Charleston and, as was to be expected from a man of his class, was a member of the Brown Fellowship Society, which was open only to the wealthiest. Dereef made his money in real estate and in the lumber business. (We'll meet his partner in the lumber business presently.) At least one of his houses is still standing at 67 Alexander Street in Charleston. There is also a Dereef Park across town that is named for him and that the Preservation Society of Charleston is currently working to—what else?—preserve.

Caroline married Richard Dereef's son, Richard Dereef, Jr., who worked in his father's lumber business. According to the census and other records, Caroline and Richard, Jr., had several sons: Richard Dereef III, Gardner, Theophilus, and Hubert. The full name of the second son, Gardner, seems to have been John Gardner Dereef—presumably named for Caroline Thorne's grandfather, John Gardner Thorne. Here is Richard Dereef's application for an account at the Freedman's Bank, with John Gardner Dereef identified as his brother:

Richard and Caroline Dereef's son Richard's application
for an account at the Freedman's Bank. Note the full name of
his next-in-line brother: John Gardner Dereef, probably
named for Caroline's grandfather, John Gardner Thorne.

There is one death listing saying that Caroline died in Charleston in the late 1880s, but I haven't yet seen any primary sources to corroborate the date or, for that matter, where she was buried.

And with that, we come to Philip Thorne. I've purposely left him until last because he's the one who is in our family tree, and I intend to spend more time on him and his family in the following post.