In 1783, Thornton went to London to continue his medical studies; characteristically, he also found time to attend lectures at the Royal Academy. The following year he was off to the Continent, carrying a letter of introduction toBenjamin Franklin, (1706-1790), written by his mentor and distant cousin Dr. John Coakley Lettsome, (1744-1815). In the summer of 1784, he explored the Highlands with Frojas de St. Frond.[4] He received his medical degree in 1784 at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.[1]
Thornton then spent time in Paris, before returning to Tortola in 1786.[1] There, he saw his mother for the first time since boyhood, where he came face to face with the source of his income—half interest in a sugar plantation and ownership of some 70 slaves, the possession of whom had begun to trouble him.[5]
Eager to achieve fame (and undoubtedly some expiation) in the cause of anti-slavery, he emigrated to the United States of America in the fall of 1786, moving to Philadelphia. His unsuccessful efforts to lead a contingent of free black Americans to join the small British settlement of London blacks at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River in West Africa were looked on favorably by Philadelphia's Quaker establishment. Some leaders of the new republic—notably James Madison, with whom he lodged at Mrs. Mary House's prominent boarding establishment in 1787 and 1788—were cognizant of Thornton's abolitionist activities. However, after moving to the City of Washington, he took advantage of slavery. According to a diary his wife kept in 1800, he frequently shopped for slaves and bought and hired them. In 1788, he became an American citizen. Thornton married Anna Maria Brodeau, daughter of a school teacher, in 1790.[6]
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