Dorothea Christina Thomas (26 June 1796 – 5 August 1846) was a free woman of colour and slave owner from Grenada, whose common-law marriage with Major John Gordon became the centre of a Scottish legal case.
[2] Her father was engaged in trade, providing goods between various islands in the British West Indies with his sloops, the Mary and the Jack.
She studied there for three years before returning to the Caribbean, where she joined her older sister, Ann and her husband John Gloster Garraway in Grenada.
[17] The attitude toward illegitimacy was more lax outside of England, and the promise of marriage was typically sufficient to allow couples to consummate their relationships before a wedding took place.
Though their destination was undisclosed, later documents confirm that the trip involved negotiations with a freedman in Tobago, who was offered a dowry of £5,000 should he marry Thomas.
[19] By early 1819, Thomas had entered into a relationship with Captain John Gordon, a Scotsman serving in the 2nd Queen's Royal Regiment of Foot.
[22] Thomas took the surname Gordon and the couple presented themselves as husband and wife in public, though John was reluctant to let his fellow soldiers know he was married.
Gordon purchased furnishings for their home with an allowance provided by her mother and she managed his household and correspondence, including his regimental reports.
[27] John had promised Gordon that he would retire from the military and sell his commission, though he was forced to accept the standard price of £3,200, as his commanding officer held him in low regard.
[32] Gordon, unfamiliar with marriage laws in Scotland, sought the advice of a lawyer and was informed that if she could establish that they were married by "habit and repute" she could contest the settlement being offered.
[34] Correspondence between the couple was presented in evidence and clearly showed the affection of John for Gordon and their son, as well as his disdain for his mother-in-law and her disregard for having her daughter respectfully wed.[Notes 2][30][35] Though Gordon was supported in her claims that they had been widely seen as husband and wife by landlords, servants and shopkeepers, John's friends and family swore that they believed he was a single man.
[36] The final ruling, which became an important precedent in Scottish Marriage Law,[27][34] was issued in John's favour on 8 July 1829, and was based on his friends' and families' evidence.
[36] After losing the case, Gordon was offered an out of court settlement, which required her to leave her son in John's care and return to Demerara.
[40][41] An analysis of Gordon's marriages offers insight into the variations of marital arrangements and family law in the British colonies.
[42] Archival evidence disputes the literary depiction that free coloured women were concubines and instead points to their ability to establish "long-lasting, stable, and apparently monogamous relationships that looked like proper marriages".