Anne Jane Thornton

Anne Jane Thornton (1817–1877), also spelt Ann Jane Thornton, was a 19th-century adventurer from Donegal who in 1832 posed as a boy to go to sea, in pursuit of a lost lover who had gone to the United States. She continued her career as a seaman until her arrival in London in 1835, when she was interviewed by the Lord Mayor of London. She later wrote a book about her adventures.

Early life

Born in Gloucestershire, in the west of England, in 1817, Thornton was the daughter of a prosperous shop-keeper. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, in 1823 her mother died, and her father moved to Donegal in Ireland where he opened a successful shop.The Lady magazine for 1835 adds a further detail: "...when six years old she accompanied her father to Ireland, where he afterwards possessed profitable stores and subsequently failed".

Life

At the age of thirteen, Thornton met Captain Alexander Burke, an Englishman whose father lived in New York, and before she was fifteen the two had become strongly attached to each other. In 1832, Burke left Donegal to travel to New York, and Thornton made up her mind to go after him. Attended by a maid and a boy, she left Donegal, obtained a suit of cabin boy's clothes, and posing as a boy, made a safe passage to New York. On arrival, she went to Burke's father's house, where she said that she had worked under the captain's orders and wished to be engaged by him again. She learnt from Burke's father that the man she loved had died a few days before.