Francis Thornton (soldier)
(1747-1808)
Lt. Francis Thornton of Rolling Hill (October 22, 1747 – November 18, 1808) was a planter and soldier during the American Revolutionary War. Thornton served as cornet of Lee's Legion of Light Dragoons commanded by Major-General Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee. Thornton went on to serve as a lieutenant in the Charlotte County Militia in the later part of the Revolution. Thornton was the son of William Thornton a Burgess for Brunswick County, Virginia and a great-great-grandson of William Thornton who arrived in Virginia from England as late as 1646 settling in Gloucester County, Virginia. Thornton was commonly known as "Frank Thornton" as indicated in the historical record and often referred to as "Francis Thornton of Rolling Hill" to differentiate him from his cousins Francis Thornton of Fall Hill and Francis Thornton of Society Hill. Thornton was a distant cousin of Presidents James Madison and Zachary Taylor.
Early life and education
Thornton was born in Gloucester County, Virginia to William Thornton a prominent Colonial Burgess and Judge and Jane Clack, the granddaughter of the Rev. James Clack. His parents were first cousins and benefited greatly not just the primogeniture status that settle a comfortable size estate upon William Thornton but also from an estate passed matrilineal from Peter Sterling, a seventeenth century surgeon with landholdings in Gloucester County, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis Thornton (soldier)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.