I represent John Thomas. I was the Deputy Superintendant of Indian Affairs in West Florida. In October 1772, I was tried for the murder of Manchac trader George Harrison. The trial lasted 13 hours, most of which was the Attorney General listening to the sound of his own voice. The jury took six minutes to find I had acted under provocation and in self-defense. In 1768 I was granted 1000 acres near the Iberville and Mississippi River. I went back to Council and petitioned for a different grant as those 1000 acres were swampy and couldn’t be planted on. They denied me, partly on the basis that my wife, Margaret, had been granted her own 400 acres on the Mississippi above Tonica in 1772. An undated petition to the Crown for losses in the colony, my widow said I had served in the Royal Artillery and in 1769 was appointed as Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Mississippi District; I was then ordered to a place called Toneca to negotiate with the indigenous peoples in the area; I obtained a grant of land and built on it. I died in 1776 and our property was devastated in Feb 1778 by American rebel James Willing and his raiders, who plundered British plantations all down the Mississippi.
Sources: 12, 14, 65