[3] After his election to represent Granville County in the Province of North Carolina House of Burgesses in 1764, Thomas Person would find himself on the side of the disaffected colonials in the War of the Regulation.

[5][6] In spite of his issues with Governor Tryon, Representative Person continued to serve in the state General Assembly until the beginning of the American Revolution, when he was named to the extra-legal North Carolina Provincial Congress.

His service consisted mostly of raising troops and collecting supplies rather than fighting on the field, and he turned over command the following year to John Butler, who would lead the unit in the Battle of Guilford Court House.

They opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution on the grounds "that the Senate would become a bastion of aristocratic privilege, that an imperial president would overawe a complacent Congress, and that an intrusive federal court system would engender costly and oppressive litigation".

[15] By the time of his death in 1800, Thomas Person owned over 125 square miles of land in North Carolina and Tennessee.