Thomas Apthorp (1741-1818)

He was born at Boston, Massachusetts, to one of its wealthiest families. In 1758, he accompanied his brother, Rev. East Apthorp, to Cambridge where he had a country estate and was a distiller. In 1768, he was appointed Deputy Paymaster to the four British regiments sent to Boston and in 1776 he was described as, “Acting Deputy Paymaster-General" although he had probably by then already left America. Part of his property which was confiscated included 9,000-acres in Thomlinson (since renamed Grafton), Vermont. He first moved to Jamaica in Queen's County, New York, where he lived on a farm of 25-acres in a house with six rooms and three fireplaces.

In 1780, he left America for good and settled in Wales where his first wife, Anne (1756-1786), died and is buried at Conway, Caernarfonshire. He remained in Wales, near Ludlow on the English/Welsh border and where John Powell had also settled - another Loyalist from Boston with Welsh family. In the 1790s, he took houses in fashionable watering-holes such as at Clifton near Bristol and Cowes on the Isle of Wight, before removing to Lisbon in Portugal for his health. There, he married Frances (1775-1851) and had one son. They returned to England and he died at Sion Hill, Walcot, near Bath, where he and his wife are buried. The Apthorp Villa at Sion Hill is not to be confused with Thomas' home, it was built later in 1840 by his grand-nephew, the Rev. Charles Apthorp Wheelwright.