 They were the great-grandparents of James Innes Thornton.Thornhill was developed by Thornton as a cotton plantation in the early 1830s and extended over .According to the diary of Josiah Gorgas, in talking with Thornton at Thornhill on Tuesday, June 6, 1865, less than two months after the end of the Civil War, Thornton "oppos(ed) ... the doctrine of secession and necessary deduction that we fought so valiantly (in the War) and bled so freely in a cause radically wrong."