Thomas Duncan (1710-1760)
Merchant, of Queen (Pearl) Street, New York City
He was the son of Captain George Duncan and the brother of Mary (Duncan) Ludlow and Frances (Duncan) Ludlow. He lived with his family in a large 3-storey house on Pearl Street (then Queen Street), or Hanover Square. In 1757, the house caught fire and burned to the ground. His wife and all but two of their children - who were all suffering from smallpox - were burned to death in the nursery on the third floor: Arabella (who was then just a baby) had been sent out of the house with her nurse; and, Frances was encouraged by a British officer, Captain Miller, to leap from an upper floor window. She was saved but, "he never recovered from the shock his frame received in sustaining her". Some of the servants who jumped weren't so lucky and they were impaled on the iron railings. Thomas himself lodged in the front of the house and he had been able to escape by a ladder. His wife had been encouraged to jump from a window but she refused to leave her children and died with them. Consumed by grief, Thomas, who had been described as an eminent merchant, never smiled again and died three years later.
