John Thurston

b. June 1, 1747 Newport, RI                      d. January 6, 1809 Hudson, NY

Revolutionary Service: MA Soldiers & Sailors in the Revolution, Pvt. Capt. Thomas Cowdin’s Company, Col. Samuel Denny’s Regiment, 1779. Regiment to reinforce Continental Army in NYS
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Member of Incorporation of Hudson, Quaker, Hudson Proprietor 

Thurston and his wife Elizabeth Jenkins came from Providence, Rhode Island, first to New York City in 1784, then to Hudson in a sloop provisioned for the voyage with a cow on board. They had nine children, four before their move to New York.

John was one of fifteen Proprietors who in 1786 were licensed by the town to “retail all kinds of spiritous liquors.” As the excerpts below from the 1787 Hudson Weekly Gazette show, he had a store with European, East and West Indian goods, traded horses and dealt in land sales with other proprietors.

He was on the board of directors of the first bank opened in Hudson in 1793, the Bank of Columbia. He was also on the committee assigned to draft the request for incorporation of the City of Hudson, and to visit the New York State Assembly to push for its acceptance, which succeeded in 1785. He was Supervisor for Hudson to the county in 1792.

John Thurston is not listed in the 1790 census as owning slaves, however, a deed book from 1816 in the Columbia County clerk’s office has record of a 45-year-old woman named Phebe who is manumitted (released from slavery) from the estate of Thurston, who had died the year before. The page on the wall is the affidavit from the deed book. The book contains 50 manumissions with affidavits from the overseers of the poor, stating the enslaved persons can fend for themselves upon manumission.

Thurston’s gravestone was designed to lay horizontally, on support stones about a foot above the ground. Elizabeth is described on her stone as “relict”, a now archaic word for widow.