Thomas Ashcraft

Background

Thomas was born on August 6, 1786, in Sampson County, North Carolina, United States. He was the son of John Ashcraft. He spent his youth in South Carolina.

Career

Thomas Ashcraft moved to Georgia in 1818 and to Randolph County, Alabama, in 1836. In 1852, he moved to Talladega (now Clay) County, Alabama, where he was a farmer and an inventor of machinery. He patented a threshing machine, a house cotton press, and a torpedo.

An old, broken, and disappointed man after the fall of the Confederacy, he died in Clay County, Alabama, on December 18, 1866.

Achievements

• Thomas Ashcraft became an important manufacturer and had connections with the Selma Iron Works in Alabama. Ashcraft supported the Confederate cause and manufactured spinning reels and looms for processing cotton clothing for the troops. He also developed a torpedo and gave the plans to the Confederate War Department.
  
  The Davis government considered him an important scientist-businessman and made him an advisor to the War Department.

Politics

Thomas was a Whig until he became a Democrat in 1860.

Connections

Ashcraft married Catherine Abel on March 15, 1815, by whom he had nine children

Father:

John Ashcraft

Wife:

Catherine Abel Steigler Ashcraft

1787-1851

Son:

Andrew Jackson Ashcraft

1829-1902

Son:

Thornton Stringfellow Ashcraft

References

• Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy
  1977