Thomas Jones (historian)

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Judge Thomas Jones was a member of the Provincial Supreme Court of New York. He lived in Bayside, Queens County, Long Island. Opinion in the colony was sharply divided in 1775 when Massachusetts rebelled against British rule, and Judge Jones came down squarely on the side of loyalty to Crown authority. For his disaffection for the rebellion he was kidnapped and exchanged for a friend of opposing opinions.

After the defeat of Cornwallis in Virginia, Judge Jones joined the evacuation to England where he married, and wrote a History of the Province of New-York during the Revolutionary War (Not the correct name). The book supplied details about the battle for Brookland as he called it or Battle of Long Island and complained against the generosity of the Treaty of Paris and consequent mistreatment of Loyalists. Judge Jones singled out for particular attention the evacuation of the village of Hempstead, the recovery of escaped slaves by their Rebel owners, and the abandonment of Britain's Iroquois allies in northern New York. The manuscript lay almost a hundred years on a closet shelf until it was discovered and published.