Thomas family

Sharp Family: Reba Sharp > AL, Hershel Sharp & Lilla Rebecca McJunkin > AL, DeWitt Clinton Sharp & Mary Jane Tomlinson > Al, Daniel Hiram Sharp & Charlotte > Ga, Tn, Al
McJunkin > Crisler  + Dunson > Heath > Alexander > Thomas   

Family  - Wales > Pennsylvania > South Carolina

"John Ap Thomas and his Friends, a contribution to the Early History of Merion," by James J. Levick, M.D. (pp.301-327)

Source: PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, VOL. IV, No. 3 publication of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1880
Extracted by Ilene Jones-Cornwell, Nashville, TN, Nov. 24, 1996; contact: (E-mail) icornwel@dubois.fisk.edu OR Ilene.Jones-Cornwell@nashville.com

                                                   Three South Carolina Sites Associated With Revolutionary "Feminist" Jane Black Thomas (1720-1811)

Jane Black Thomas could be called South Carolina's first feminist. Had the word existed, she never would have approved of such a radical term for herself, given her conservative, strict Presbyterian upbringing and her standing as a bedrock pillar of the Fairforest Presbyterian Church. She would have been pleased, however, to discover herself described as a "sincere and spirited whig"—a Patriot—who fought for independence of the American colonies.

When Pennsylvania-born Jane Black and her husband, Welshman John Thomas, brought their children from Pennsylvania to South Carolina around 1749, they and their accompanying Scot-Irish-Welsh neighbors found themselves up to their necks in Cherokee Indian territory. Their first homestead on Fishing Creek at Catawba River and the second, in 1762 on Fairforest Creek in the Upper or Broad River District, had to be defended constantly from marauding Cherokees and allied tribes. Just when it seemed a decade of self-defense had brought some peace and stability to the Upper Piedmont, the Revolutionary War broke out in the northeast and swept southward.

Jane's husband John had been commander of the area's loyalist militia, taking part in Braddock's defeat in 1755 and in the "snow campaign" against the Cherokees in 1762. When the British-colonial hostilities began in the early 1770s, John Thomas resigned his English commission and formed the Patriots' Spartan Regiment in 1775. He was elected colonel and commander of the militia, in which the older Thomas sons—John, Jr., Abram, and Robert—and several sons-in-law served. The Thomas matriarch, her daughters, and her daughters-in-law all were as immersed in the defense of the Upper Piedmont as their men - for more information see Ilene Jones Cornwell E-mail: ijcorn@bellsouth.net