THORNTON, Jessy Quinn, jurist, born near Point Pleasant, Mason County, West Virginia, '24 August, 1810; died in Salem, Oregon, 5 February, 1888. In his infancy his parents removed to Champaign county, Ohio. The son studied three years in London, read law in Staunton, Virginia, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He afterward attended law lectures at the University of Virginia, in 1835 he opened an office in Palmyra, Missouri, in 1836 edited a paper in the interest of Martin Van Buren, and in 1841 removed to Quincy, Illinois In 1846 he emigrated to Oregon, and early in 1847 was appointed chief justice of the provisional government. In the autumn of the same year he resigned and went to Washington, where he exerted his influence in forwarding the organization of the territorial government, rind in incorporating the principal of the "Wilmot proviso" in the act that prohibited the extension of slavery into the territory. He was the author of the provision in the statutes at large that gives to the cause of public education the 16th and 36th sections of public lands in each township. In 1864-'5 he served in the legislature. At the time of the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois, in 1837, he commented freely on the occurrence in his paper, and a pro-slavery mob surrounded his building, but, after threatening death to the first man that should enter the office unbidden, he made a speech announcing his position on the slavery question and defending the right of free speech so dearly as to mollify his hearers. He published "Oregon and California in 1848" (2 vols., New York, 1849), and "History of the Provisional Government of Oregon" in the "Proceedings of the Oregon Pioneer Association" for 1875 and in the "History of the Willamette Valley."