Thomas Nelson was born in 1716 at Yorktown, Virginia, into a family rapidly rising through commerce and public office. He was the son of William Nelson, a merchant commonly known as “Scotch Tom,” and Margaret Reade Nelson. His father had emigrated from England and built a substantial fortune through the tobacco trade. Yorktown’s waterfront exposed the young Thomas to ships, warehouses, credit, and the Atlantic connections upon which Virginia’s plantation economy depended. Nelson received the education expected of a merchant-planter’s heir, likely through private tutors and direct participation in family business. He learned writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, correspondence, and the legal customs governing tobacco exports and imported goods. The family’s prosperity also depended upon land and enslaved labor, placing him within the colony’s slaveholding elite. As a young man Nelson entered the mercantile firm and expanded his property. He married Lucy Armistead, daughter of another established Virginia family. Their large household included Thomas Nelson Jr., later a signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor. Marriage, kinship, and business together strengthened the Nelsons’ influence throughout the Tidewater. Nelson’s standing brought him into local and colonial government. He served in the House of Burgesses and held county responsibilities while continuing commercial affairs. Yorktown merchants had to navigate fluctuating tobacco prices, imperial regulations, debt, and dependence upon British credit. These experiences gave Nelson an intimate understanding of both the benefits and constraints of the imperial economy. Before his family became identified with the Revolution, Thomas Nelson Sr. had been shaped by a successful immigrant father, port-town commerce, private education, marriage, plantation ownership, slavery, and decades of local service. He represented the generation that transformed mercantile wealth into landed and political authority.