Rewind: March 15, 2026 –

“John Thurman: Rebel or Loyalist?”

We were fortunate to have our lead story in a recent issue of our newsletter ‘Pasttimes’ reflect on one of the most important early settlers in what would become Warren County, John Thurman.  Johnsburg and Thurman owe their names to John Thurman.  Before the Revolutionary War, he owned most of the northern section in what is today Warren County.  This important man…what side was he on?  Was he a Patriot? British? Or Neutral?  Johnsburg resident, history writer,  and philanthropist, Glenn Pearsall sets out some amazing facts for us to ponder.  

We are repeating Mr. Pearsall’s fascinating article from that newsletter here for the benefit of those who do not receive ‘Pasttimes,’ and we invite those people to consider joining the Society to be sure to get the next issue of the newsletter.  

Rewind:  March 15, 2026 –

John Thurman: Rebel or Loyalist?

By Glenn Pearsall

The Townships of Johnsburg and Thurman are named for John Thurman.  He was a wealthy New York City merchant who was also an early investor in the Totten & Crossfield land speculations and purchased property in “the Northern Wilderness,” as it was then called, in his own name as early as 1775.  At one time, he owned most of northern Warren County, much of northern Washington County to the east, and he had significant land holdings in Essex County to the north.  These lands were procured before, during, and after the American Revolution, so it is only natural to ask:  Was John Thurman a Rebel or was he a Loyalist?

John Thurman was proud to call himself an Englishman and wished to remain so.  As David Ellis notes in his 1959 work A Short History of New York State, “for almost a century the Union Jack had waved over this outpost of empire.  New Yorkers were proud to call themselves English subjects; they were proud of the Empire; it was theirs; and they had fought, bled, and died to extend its authority over vast areas of the New World.  Imperial patriotism was strong among all classes, but nowhere stronger than among the wealthy landlords and merchants.”  (Short History NYS, p.188).  John Thurman certainly fell in that category.  His father had married into a wealthy Dutch family with significant land holdings that included a wharf on the East River (between today’s Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges) and a wharf on the Hudson River at the end of Cortlandt Street where the mail boat from Albany docked, and where today the ferry terminal for the World Trade Center Ferry Terminal is located.  In 1765, age 35, John Thurman opened a dry goods/import store near the northwest corner of Wall Street and Smith’s Street (today’s Williams Street).  Located in one of the busiest seaports on the east coast, as his business grew, John Thurman developed business dealings with firms in London and Belfast as well as in France and the West Indies and men of importance in New York and throughout the colonies.  In 1768, age 38, with other merchants, he founded the original New York City Chamber of Commerce and served as a member of the committee regarding the whale fishery, which in turn, helped establish the whale industry out of Hudson, Columbia County, New York where Thurman also had major land holdings.

In 1764 Parliament raised duties on a variety of imported items called the Sugar Act. This was followed in 1765 by the passage of the Stamp Act which mandated any printed materials in the Colonies carry a tax stamp. These acts offended Thurman’s sense of right and wrong, but also were harmful to his business ventures.  In 1765, he signed a petition decrying the Stamp Act. River, Rails and Ski Trails, published by the Johnsburg Historical Society in 1994, asserts that in signing that petition he became “an active member of the Sons of Liberty.” (River, p. 4). This is unlikely. As a wealthy merchant with conservative leanings, Thurman detested mob rule and lawlessness.

But rebellion was indeed in the air.  On March 4, 1774, a committee of concerned moderates formed and Thurman was named chairman.  They printed a broadside and distributed it throughout the city asking concerned citizens to meet “at the house of the widow De La Montaigne, thence to proceed from thence to the Exchange, and there give your voices.”

In February 1775, when the NY Assembly refused to choose delegates for a Second Continental Congress, the authority of New York’s legal government collapsed.  In March, Thurman presided over a meeting in opposition to the election of delegates to the Second Continental Congress fearing that Congress would then raise an army and declare independence from England (which they did).

A Committee of Sixty, assuming quasi-governmental power, called for a public meeting, and on April 24, a crowd of some eight thousand people – roughly a third of New York City’s population had assembled in front of City Hall to hear from the Committee of Sixty (A History of New York to 1898, Gotham Burrows, p.220).  A committee of 100, to which merchant John Thurman was named, was formed to help govern and control the city, but increasingly radical patriots seized control of the political power in the city.  A special committee of twenty from the Committee of 100, again including Thurman, was then selected as deputies for the City and County to meet with the deputies of other counties to the Provincial Congress on May 22, 1775.  But rioting in the streets continued, and war loomed large on the horizon.  That October, Governor Tyron had to flee his residence and office for the safety of a British Man-of-War in the harbor.

Before today’s digital records and the use of carbon paper and copy machines so prevalent in the mid to late 20^th century, writers used a “letterbook.”  Transcribed personally or by a private secretary, these letterbooks would record, word for word, what had been written in letters sent to others.  Fortunately, several of John Thurman’s letterbooks are preserved at the State Archives and are available for public viewing by appointment.  So, what did John Thurman say, in his own words, about the turmoil he saw in the streets?

In September of 1774, he wrote a business associate in London that  “I hope never to see the day when Americans shall not be an English man as well as an American, and that Americans may ever be ready to draw the sword in Defense of Great Brittain (sic) and her King,” but also warned that, “There is not a man born in America that does not Understand the use of Fire Arms & that well, as we have much Sport every man is provided, it is almost the First thing they purchase & take to all new settlements, in the Cities you can scarcely find a lad of twelve years that does not for a Gunning (letter John Thurman to Sargent Chambers & Co, Co, London, NYS Archives).  He adds that the increasing rhetoric and violence against Mother England will likely lead to nothing but a “bloody and futile war for which they (the Colonists) are almost totally unprepared.”

The next letter in his letterbook states that “Bad times and worse a Coming, if your property in these parts is unsafe, so is my own. Total ruin may be the end of Civil Warrs (sic) which most certainly be the case or those very unconstitutional Acts must be repealed, with your Great Men Rest the Fate of the British Empire.” (letter to the firm of Low, Griffin & Clay, London, dated October 23, 1774).

In July of 1775: “Perhaps this may be the Last Remittance I shall ever make you, a Civil Warr (sic) is now begun, a Wanton Ruinous Warr (sic). It is not the choice in the Americas, they are hard Drove, they have nothing Left but Slavery or Death, the Latter is Preferable in their Esteem.” (Letter of July 25, 1775 to Aaron Orme & Son, London).

The use of the word “civil war” may surprise you, but to men of that time it certainly seemed more a civil war than an outright rebellion. Americans were openly divided regarding declaring independence from Britain; some had said 1/3 called for rebellion, 1/3 wished to remain part of the British Empire and 1/3 just didn’t want to get involved.  Everyone agreed rebellion against Britain, at the time having the world’s largest Navy, would be costly.  And a civil war itself was to be feared; it had been little more than 100 years since England herself had been torn apart by a civil war (1642-1651).

The most puzzling of all of John Thurman’s letters is one dated January 26, 1776 from Albany, NY – all in code.  Was he now spying for the British?  For the rebels?  Why the secrecy?  We do not know – the code in that letter has never been identified.

Regardless of what it was called, war it was to be.  On July 3, 1776 – just a day before independence was officially declared in Philadelphia – a massive British fleet sailed into New York harbor.

Many patriotic residents fled the city in terror.  The city fathers hurriedly packed up important documents – not old notes of the assembly’s debates or political history, but rather files of real estate deeds, many dating back more than 100 years.  If these were destroyed, the city would remain in chaos even after the war as owners litigated ownership and property lines.  James Beekman, a delegate to the Provincial Congress obtained permission to takes these with a few members of his family on a sloop up the Hudson River to Kingston for safe keeping.  It appears John Thurman may have accompanied him as he held large land holdings in the Kingston, NY area.

In Kingston, the moderate views John Thurman espoused were seen with suspicion by the more radical patriots of the Hudson River Valley.  Several times John Thurman was requested to take an Oath of Allegiance to the state of New York as a free and independent state.  Each time he refused saying that most of the committee members knew him and his family for generations and that should be sufficient proof of his character. It apparently wasn’t. On July 20, 1778 the committee ordered him to collect his things and, escorted by the Albany County Sheriff Isaac Fonda, he was expelled back into British lines.  Back in British-held New York City he was persecuted as a rebel.

Thurman’s letterbook is surprisingly silent from March 16, 1776 to June 22, 1785 with the exception of one letter written from New York City in June of 1779.  According to Roger Kennedy in his book Orders From France, Thurman, now about age 49, is enjoying an architectural tour of Europe.  There he meets with Marc Brunel, who later claims meeting John Thurman was the turning point in his life.  Brunel worked with Thurman on the plans for Thurman’s “Elm Hill” in Johnsburg including “mills and mines and roads being built within eight hundred square miles of the Town of Thurman (Orders, p. 56).  Years later, Brunel would become world famous as the designer of the Thames Tunnel in London, the first subaqueous tunnel in the world.

In 1784, age 54, his Whig friends in New York City successfully petition the Assembly to permit him to return to America.  He buys a house at #58 Cherry Street in Manhattan, just down the street from George Washington’s house at #10 where Washington lived as President of the United States when this nation’s first capitol was in New York City (1785-1790).

Back in America and peace declared, John Thurman now sets his sights on his land holdings to the north and begins building at “Elm Hill” in Johnsburg.

So a rebel? A loyalist? I’ll let the facts speak for themselves.

Glenn L. Pearsall is the author of 3 books of Adirondack history: Echoes in These Mountains: (2008 and 2022), When Men and Mountains Meet (2014) and Leaves Torn Asunder (2016). He and his wife Carol live near the base of Crane Mountain in Johnsburg.