Thomas Jones (1731-1792)

He graduated from Yale and embarked on a legal career. He was Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Queens County (1757-58); Recorder of New York City (1767-1773); Member of the Corporation Counsel of New York City; and, from 1773 Colonial Judge of the Provincial Supreme Court. He was a Loyalist and in 1775 was kidnapped by the Patriots before being exchanged for a friend of opposing political beliefs. In 1779, his estate was confiscated and he and his wife were ordered to leave New York for England. They lived in Bath before settling in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. There, he wrote A History of New York During the Revolutionary War and of the Leading Events in the Other Colonies at That Period, published posthumously in 1879. He and his wife, Anna DeLancey, died without children of their own but they adopted their niece, Anna, the eldest daughter of Anna's brother (John) by his wife, the eldest daughter of Thomas' sister (Arabella). Nonetheless, according to the will of Thomas' father, if he was to have no natural children then Fort Neck House was to pass to his nephew, David Floyd-Jones.