Cheesy Grits: "The Black Kings of Edisto Island"—Who was John Thorne?

One of the challenging puzzles of doing family history is tracking down adult children. The federal and state censuses are great for snapshots of families on a given date. But after a family starts to disperse, locating the children can be a challenge—especially the daughters who many times have married and abandoned their birth names in favor of their husbands' family names.

With John Thorne, however, the problem was reversed: how do we establish that someone is the adult son of (relatively) distant parents? More specifically, can we tie John Thorne, our Black King of Edisto Island, to Philip and Elizabeth Weston Thorne of 7 Henrietta Street in Charleston?


According to the 1860 federal census, Philip and Elizabeth Weston Thorne do indeed have a son named John. He's their eldest, he's twenty years of age, and the census identifies him as a "millwright," which was basically the same occupation as "machinist" in that era. He's not the only "John Thorn" in Charleston in 1860, as Philip Thorne had a brother named John who was a tailor, not a machinist.

The 1870 federal census indeed places a 28-year-old "Thorne, Jno. S." on Edisto Island, identifies him as Black and his occupation as "machinist." Although it says he was born in South Carolina, that's still not enough to link him to Philip and Elizabeth. The age and occupation are tantalizing, but only hints.

The 1880 federal census shows him again on Edisto Island, although this time his occupation is identified as "merchant and farmer." (Apparently no category for "king" in the federal census.) By now, he's married to a woman named Sarah, who's eleven years younger than he. All tantalizing information, but we're not getting any closer to Philip and Elizabeth.

The jackpot came when I checked the Freedman's Bank records for Charleston. The Freedman's Bank was chartered by the U.S. government after the Civil War precisely to encourage economic development among the newly-emancipated slaves. Applicants for accounts were required to list their family members' names: parents, spouses, and children.

Although the bank failed in 1874 in part because of bad investments, many of the records survived and have subsequently become a gold mine for African-American family history because of the family relationships set out in the applications. So if John Thorne filed an application for an account, it might have some very useful information on it.

So, had John Thorne filed an application for such an account? Indeed he had, and here is an image of it:

Freedman's Bank Application for
John S. Thorne of Edisto Island

As if there were any doubt left, the Freedman's Bank records also include the following application, filed in 1871:

Freedman's Bank application by John S. Thorne
for the Edisto Land Company.

As they say in some parts, "BINGO!" On the first application above, filed in 1870, John Thorne gave his address as Edisto Island, his father's name as "Philip M. Thorne," his mother's name as "Elizabeth," and then all the siblings' names that I immediately recognized from having pored over the census and other records, including identifying "Rebecca" as one of his two sisters. Note also that his color is identified as "Brown"—the old way of identifying someone who is mixed-race.

The second application confirms his connection to some sort of group, the Edisto Land Company, having or proposing to have dealings with property, presumably on Edisto Island—supporting another detail of Sam Gadsden's story.

So the documentary evidence has become rather compelling: one of the two Black Kings of Edisto Island seems indeed to have been the first-born son of Philip and Elizabeth Weston Thorne.

And Jane's great-great-grandmother, Rebecca Thorne Howard, was therefore John of Edisto's sister, making him Jane's great-great-granduncle. I, an Amish Mennonite, am married to the great-great-grandniece of one of the two Black Kings of Edisto Island.

But what about Sam Gadsden's report that "Johnny Thorn" was "half-Spanish"? I haven't yet turned up any photos of Philip or Elizabeth or of any of their children, so I can only guess at what Sam is talking about. Here is my guess: the Thornes were all mixed-race, with some blend of African and Caucasian features. Perhaps John Thorne had strong Caucasian facial features but was nevertheless dark-skinned, leading Sam Gadsden and his neighbors to think he was and yet wasn't one of them; thus, "half-Spanish."

But that's just a guess. I don't know and I don't think we can hope to know unless we can find a photo—and even then, we're still guessing about what Sam Gadsden and the folks around him on Edisto Island were thinking. Whatever else they were thinking, it was clear that they trusted him with their business and their monies, which is no small thing.

In any event, suddenly I was a whole lot more interested in Edisto Island, particularly since, according to Sam Gadsden, John Thorne's store and house were still standing. It was time to go down to Edisto.