THORNTON, Anthony, soldier, born in the family homestead, Ormsby, Caroline County, Virginia, 1 February, 1748; died in Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky, 21 December, 1828. He was a thorough patriot during the Revolutionary war, and commanded a regiment of minute-men in the contest, being present at the head of his regiment at the siege of Yorktown. His brother PRESLEY commanded a company of horsemen, and another brother was an aide to General Washington. Colonel Anthony raised a large family, whose descendants are scattered throughout the United States. His sword which he used during the Revolutionary war is still preserved by his grandchildren at Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky, to which place he moved with his family in 1808 and engaged in agriculture.--His grandson, James Bankhead, born in Mount Zephyr, Caroline County, Virginia, 28 August, 1806; died in Memphis, Tennessee, 12 October, 1867, was the son of James B. Thornton. He represented his district in the Virginia senate in 1838-'40, and was one of the prime movers in the establishment of the Military institute at Lexington, Virginia He was educated at William and Mary college, and subsequently studied law, located at; Warrenton, Fauquier County, afterward at Bowling Green, Caroline County, and in 1.847 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he continued to practise his profession. He was the author of a " Digest of the Conveyaneing, Testamentary, and Registry Laws of the States of the Union (Philadelphia, 1847), and a work on "Assignments," the manuscript of which was burned accidentally before its publication. While engaged in active practice he contributed to current literature. In polities he was a Democrat, and in the civil war he was identified with the southern cause. --James Bankhead's son, Gustavus Brown, sanitarian, born in Bowling Green, Virginia, 22 February, 1835, was graduated at the Memphis medical college in 1858, and at the medical department of the University of New York in 1860. At the beginning of the civil war he served as a surgeon in the Confederate army, and in 1862-'5 was chief surgeon of a division. In 1868 he was appointed physician in charge of the Memphis city hospital, and continued so until in 1879, when he became president of the Memphis board of health; also since 1880 he has been a member of the Tennessee state board of health, both of which appointments he still holds. Dr. Thornton acquired reputation by his heroism and skill during the three great yellow-fever epidemics in Memphis in 1873-'8 and 1879. He is a member of various sanitary and medical societies, and was in 1882 president of the Tennessee state medical society. In addition to his official reports as president of the Memphis board of health, he has contributed numerous memoirs on sanitary subjects to the "Proceedings of the American Public Health Association" and to the transactions of other societies of which he is a member. These include "Yellow Fever, Pathology and Treatment" (1880); "Memphis Sanitation and Quarantine in 1879 and 1880" (1880) ; "The Negro Mortality of Memphis" (1882); " Sanitation of the Mississippi Valley" (1884) ; "Gulf Coast Quarantine " (1884) ; and" Six Years' Sanitary Work in Memphis "(1886).