Thomas Preston
BIRTH
1722
unknown
DEATH
unknown
FAMILY
##
Preston, Thomas
(1722-1798)
Thomas Preston was the British Army captain commanding the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Charged with murder, he was defended by John Adams and acquitted after the jury found insufficient evidence that he had ordered the troops to fire.
1
Places | Image | Address | GPS | Site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Boston Massacre Site | Devonshire Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02102, USA | MARKER |
DIED:
unknown
The exact date and place of Thomas Preston’s birth have not been established in the source used for this entry. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
The available biographical record identifies Thomas Preston with work or public activity as a soldier. Those roles provide the clearest documented basis for including this person in the database and should be read in the political, military, professional, or household context of the period. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them.