Philip M. Thorne of 7 Henrietta Street was not without stature himself. Although he of course married well when he married Elizabeth Weston, we know that he was recognized within his community as a leader both before and after the Civil War.
Before the Civil War, Philip Thorne was elected president of one of Charleston's social/benevolent organizations for Free Persons of Color, the Friendly Moralist Society. Established in 1838, the Friendly Moralist Society was, like the Brown Fellowship Society, established to provide for burials for its members. In addition to providing a cemetery, the Society also provided financial assistance to its widows and orphans. In addition, the dues-paying members themselves could draw on the resources of the Society in times of financial or other hardship.
How long Thorne served as president of the Friendly Moralist Society isn't quite clear, as the Society was riven by factionalism—mostly over perceived irregularities in elections—and for better or worse, Philip M. Thorne was apparently the leader of one of the factions that tried to break away.
Complicating the question even further is the fact that the extant records of the Friendly Moralist Society extend only from 1841 to 1856, so we don't have much of an idea what happened over the longer term.
Still, if you follow the link indicated above, you'll arrive at the digitized images of the original records. On the first page of Part 2 "Absentees," you'll see, for example, that P.M. Thorne missed the meeting of May 9, 1842, with the reason penciled in as "sick." Members were typically fined a not-altogether nominal sum for missing meetings: maybe 50 cents. Thorne also missed the meeting of July 8, 1842, but I haven't yet deciphered the scrawled reason for his absence. And so on....
The members of these societies led complicated lives, and their organizations reflected those complications. I'll go further into some of those complications in my next post, which will be a further explorations of these societies and their members.
The second measure of Charleston community esteem that we find regarding Philip Thorne comes after the Civil War. Charlestonians didn't wait for the ratification of the XVth amendment to the U.S. Constitution to allow African Americans to vote in municipal elections: in 1868, Philip Thorne was elected alderman and served on the Charleston City Council.
And here are some of the public accounts of his activities:
According to the Charleston Daily News of 12 May 1869, Alderman Philip Thorne served on the City Lands and Artesian Well* committees.
The 14 July 1869 edition of the same paper reports that Philip Thorne was elected a Commissioner of the Alms House.
The 17 November 1869 edition reports that Alderman Thorne "...presented a petition of E.N. Brodie to renew lease of water lot west of Lynch street." The petition was suspended pending a report from the Committee on Public Lands.
And of course, it wouldn't be Charleston without something, um, eccentric: the 3 Nov 1869 edition reports that the City Council was moving to remove an alderman named Thomas J. Mackey for pulling a pistol on his nephew, E.W. M. Mackey, who was also an alderman, and firing at him three times during a City Council meeting. The Daily News rather breathlessly tallied the potential votes regarding removal of Thomas Mackey from the City Council, and reported that Thorne was prepared to vote with the minority against his removal. (The projected vote didn't go along color lines. As it turned out, both men resigned.)
In December of 1869, the City Committees were reorganized: the Daily News reports on 9 Dec that Philip Thorne was transferred from the Artesian Well committee to the Steam Engine committee.
In 1871, Philip Thorne apparently ran for alderman again, but lost. I surmise this by seeing a Thorne listed in the election results as having received considerably fewer votes than the rest of the candidates. And there is no further mention of him in the reports of City Council proceedings.
The same window of opportunity that had opened to permit Philip Thorne to be elected alderman in the City of Charleston also permitted Francis Cardozo to be elected South Carolina's secretary of state, and Civil War hero Robert Smalls to be elected to the South Carolina state legislature and ultimately to the U.S. House of Representatives. These are not the only African Americans who served in elected office soon after the Civil War. For a time, new lights were burning for all of us, but then they were put out again.
Research note: digital images of the Charleston Daily News from this period have been made available by our wonderful Library of Congress on a section of their website entitled Chronicling America. To repeat the search that yielded the results I've cited above, click on the link in the previous sentence, limit the search to "South Carolina" instead of "All States" and specify the date range as 1866-1873. With those limits in place, simply search for "Thorne". Note well that there was at least one other noteworthy "Thorne" who starts appearing in the Charleston newspaper around 1872: Philip M. Thorne's son, John S. Thorne. We'll get to him shortly.
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*The City of Charleston had a considerable history of drilling water wells, with some of them tapping into aquifers at great depth—over 1200 ft.—where there was sometimes sufficient pressure to bring fresh water all the way to the surface where it overflowed the casings: hence, artesian wells. The well being dug during Thorne's term on the Committee seems to have been one of two atttempted at a lot on the corner of Wentworth and Meeting Streets. An interesting municipal report on the history of Charleston's municipal well-drilling efforts through about 1877 has been archived here.
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