Thorpe, George, was a native of Gloucestershire and the son of Nicholas Thorpe of Wanswell Court. He was related both in blood and by marriage with some of the distinguished men of the Jamestown colony, and among others with Sir Thomas Dale. The Thorpe family was a prominent one and our subject became a gentleman pensioner, a gentleman of the privy chamber of the king and a member of parliament from Portsmouth. He was a man of strong religious feeling and became greatly interested in the problem of the conversion of the savages with which his countrymen were newly coming into contact in the new world. He formed a partnership with Sir William Throckmorton, John Smith of Nibley, Richard Berkeley and others for the ownership and conduct of a private plantation in Virginia, and selling his English property, he set sail for Virginia, where he arrived March, 1620. He was appointed deputy to govern the college land and to have three hundred acres and ten tenants, and on June 28, 1620, he was made a member of the council. The advent of this friend of the Indians in Virginia was coincident with the formation of the great Indian plot against the English of 1621-22, and there are some who hold that his disinterested friendship for the red man was an aid to them in their undertaking. Thorpe certainly displayed the most complete faith in his dusky charges and visited them in the forest, discussing religion with Opochankano, from which he derived great encouragement for the hope of their final conversion. Thorpe's interest were not confined to the Indians, however, as the following letter received by him from the company in 1621 will show: "And to you, Mr. Thorpe, we will freely confesse that both your letter and endeavors are most acceptable to us; the entering upon the staple comodoties of wine and silk we highly commend, and assure you it is the Companie's care to reward your merit. * * * In the meantime they desire you to proceed in these noble courses assuring you of all love and respect." In spite of this, however, it would seem that his attention was chiefly given to the colony's relations with the savages, especially in regard to the conversion of the latter. His manner of winning their friendship was certainly worthy of his professions and even went to the length of building a handsome house in the English style for Opochankano and putting to death a number of English mastiffs of which the Indians had expressed fear. It was certainly one of the blackest stains on the Indian character to be found in all the white man's dealings with him that, when, on March 22, 1621-22, the colonists were surprised in the great massacre, George Thorpe was not spared, but was murdered with every circumstance of remorseless cruelty. Thorpe was twice married, first to Margaret, a daughter of Sir Thomas Porter and after her death to Margaret, a daughter of David Harris, who survived him.
