From Wales to Texas

b. 1585 or 1606

Llangennech, Carmarthenshire

• John Thomas, the immigrant

The family tradition starts in Carmarthenshire, with the Thomases in Lawrence Buckley Thomas's The Thomas Book, and a coat of arms the family brought to America.

No document proves the link. The MyHeritage tree has a John David Thomas born at Llangennech in 1585; Robert E. Thomas has a John Thomas born in 1606, and doesn't say where.

1610 or 1622 to 1740

Nansemond and Isle of Wight Counties, Virginia

• John Thomas (b. 1628)
• Richard Thomas (1648–1687)
• John Thomas (1668–c. 1706)

Getting there. The crossing is dashed because the sources disagree on when he came: about 1610, or 1622.

Three generations farmed tobacco land in Nansemond and Isle of Wight, on the south side of the James River. Most of what's known comes from land and will records Robert E. Thomas worked through, since the Nansemond courthouse records burned.

The thread south runs through Mary Lawrence, the second wife of John Thomas (b. 1668). Her father's 1663 patent in North Carolina passed through her to her son.

1740 or 1741 to about 1812

Edgecombe County, North Carolina

• Elder John Thomas (1705–1788) and Christenator Roberts
• Maj. Theophilus Thomas (1740–1803) and Mary Rogers
• Benjamin Thomas (b. 1778) and Polly Dickinson

John Thomas moved to North Carolina in 1740 or 1741. Robert E. Thomas puts it down to the price of land in Virginia. He was a Baptist from 1748, and founded the Tosneot Baptist Church in 1756.

His son Theophilus was a major in the Revolution and a judge of the county court at Tarboro from 1778 to 1800. In 1771 he married Mary Rogers, and his father gave him land on White Oak Swamp.

Their son Benjamin was born here in 1778. By 1810 the old fields were wearing out, and the new cotton land was to the south and west.

Read more: Major Theophilus Thomas

about 1812 to 1822

Madison and Lawrence Counties, Alabama

• Benjamin Thomas and Polly Dickinson, and their children

Getting there. There's no record of the route. They probably went by Edgefield, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia, where there were Thomas relatives already.

Benjamin sold his Edgecombe land in 1811–12 and took the family to the new cotton country north of the Tennessee River. He's in the 1816 list of the inhabitants of Madison County, and that December he paid $1,590 for a tract with houses on it.

By 1820 they'd moved twenty-five or thirty miles west, to Lawrence County. His brothers and a sister followed him to north Alabama.

February to July 1822

Natchitoches, Louisiana

• Benjamin and Polly, their children and the people they enslaved: twenty or more

Getting there. Down the Natchez Trace to Natchez, then west across Louisiana. The Trace was too narrow for wagons, so most of them must have walked.

Natchitoches, the old French and Spanish river town, was the jumping-off point for east Texas. They were there by the end of February 1822.

On March 3, Benjamin and Polly sold 205 acres back in Edgecombe County to their son Shadrach before Judge John C. Carr. It was Polly's land, her share of the Dickinson estate.

1822 (or as late as 1827) to 1874

The Ayish Bayou, near San Augustine, Texas

• Benjamin Thomas (d. c. 1832–35) and Polly (d. c. 1840)
• Shadrach Dickinson Thomas (1799–1874)

Getting there. Across the Sabine and along the Camino Real.

Benjamin settled a few miles west of San Augustine, on the road to Nacogdoches, near what is now the Thomas Cemetery. In 1834 a Methodist preacher preached "at the house of Benjamin Thomas, seven miles west of town." He died there sometime between 1832 and 1835.

The family stayed put while the country changed around them: Mexico until 1836, then the Republic of Texas, the United States in 1845, and the Confederacy.

Shadrach was a justice of the peace from 1837 and sheriff of San Augustine County for most of 1847 to 1856, and was licensed as a Methodist preacher in 1843.

1871 to 1960

Chireno, Nacogdoches County, Texas

• Capt. Samuel Brown Thomas (1831–1911) and Mary Elizabeth Garrett
• William Clayborn "Bee" Thomas (1879–1960) and Vera Lee Miller

Samuel Brown Thomas was born under the Mexican flag in 1831, near the old homestead. He served as a captain in the 13th Texas Cavalry, which fought at Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas, in 1864. He married Mary Garrett in 1871 and raised his family around Chireno, just over the county line.

Their son Bee was born in Chireno in 1879, married Vera Lee Miller of San Augustine in 1911, lived in Nacogdoches County, and died in Chireno in 1960, where he was born.

Read more: Samuel Brown Thomas