Thomas last appeared in Granville County, NORTH CAROLINA records in 1794 when he appeared on a tax list and according to the death notice of his daughter Susannah, Thomas and his family moved to Elbert County, GA in 1798 or 1799. The first recorded land purchase by Thomas was in 1804 for 573 and one half acres located on South Beaver Dam Creek about a mile to the east of the town of Bowman on Highway 172. Thomas's plantation and home were located of the southwest side of the creek. This is probably the place where Thomas is buried since there is a graveyard on the property. In December 1833 Thomas sold 1 acre of his land for 25 dollars to Jackson Oliver, Archibald Burden, Joseph Pulliam, Charles Reynolds and David Hudson, trustees for the Methodist Episcopal Church. The land, which they were to build a church on, is located on South Beaver Dam Creek. The church is no longer in existence and there is no sign of a graveyard.
On July 1, 1843, at a Georgia Land Lottery, Thomas swore to an oral oath that he was a Revolutionary War soldier. Although Thomas does not appear in the Continental Army records of soldiers from North Carolina, all able bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60 who took an Oath of Allegiance to the United States were required to join their State Militia or volunteer for service in the Continental Army. Thomas turned 16 during the war and was living in Granville County, North Carolina. The North Carolina State Militia was the largest of the 13 States but most of the records for those men no longer exist. They were kept at the county courthouses and due to a lack of care and other disasters almost none of the records have survived to the present day. Although portions of a few companies and some battalions have been pieced together using pension and other records the only State Militia records for Granville County that have survived are Oaths of Allegiances for May 22nd and 30th of 1778. Thomas would not of been 16 in 1778 and therefore not able to take the oath. But I did see that many of his neighbors of 1786 took the oath. They were from the Beaver Dam District that gives us a clue as to what part of the county Thomas was from. It's also possible that Thomas was an partisan or an irregular meaning he never formally enlisted in the North Carolina State Militia. But this is unlikely in Thomas's case since he swore that he was a soldier and partisans and irregulars were generally not considered soldiers and were not entitled to pensions and or land bounties.

There were several battles in the state of North Carolina in 1781 that would have made him about17 years old. On April 25th and September 13th there were battles at the town of Hillsboro in Orange County, which at that time was only about 10 miles from Granville County, where Thomas lived. The following is a brief history of the September, 1781 Hillsboro Raid in which Thomas may have taken part in: Tory Colonel David Fanning put out a call for volunteers and in a short time he had950 men in his command, the purpose of this was to capture the Patriot, Governor Burke in Hillsboro. After marching all day and night Fanning reached Hillsboro in the morning and took possession of the town, but not without a fight from the Patriots. In the morning battle 15 Patriots were killed, 20 wounded and 200 taken prisoner. Included in the group taken prisoner were Governor Burke, the council, several Continental officers, 71 Continental soldiers and the rest were local militia and volunteer Patriots. Col. Fanning and his Loyalist volunteers left Hillsboro at about noon with their prisoners and had covered about 18 miles when they were attacked at Cane Creek in Orange County (present day it's in Alamance County) by 400 Continental soldiers in the command of General John Butler. The Loyalists suffered many casualties in this four-hour battle but still were able to defeat the Patriots. Col. Fanning was badly wounded and had to be left behind with 60 other wounded Loyalist, while the rest of his troops eluded capture. In the 1880's Jerusha Pledger Murphy, while giving family information to her son John Joseph Pledger Murphy, said that her great uncle Tommy Pledger was a very well educated man. This falls in line with the Quakers, for they thought education was very important and even though his father, Joseph, was disowned from the religion the values of a good education were probably still important to them. She also said he worked in the fields of his farm up until three years before he died which would of made him about 78 years old.