Pasteur, Thomas

1757–29 July 1806

Thomas Pasteur, career army officer, was from Halifax and perhaps was a brother of Charles Pasteur. On 15 July 1777 he was commissioned an ensign in the Fourth Regiment of the North Carolina Continental Line. After a promotion to lieutenant late in 1777, he was transferred to the First Regiment during the consolidation of the state's Continental Line at Valley Forge early in the summer of 1778. During the 1780 action in Charles Town, S.C., he was captured by British forces and remained a prisoner until his exchange on 14 June 1781. Pasteur returned to the Fourth Regiment in October 1782 and served as paymaster until the end of the war. Remaining in the military service, he retired as a major in 1803. In 1787 he bought one hundred acres of land in Halifax County. A deed dated 1789 indicates that his wife's given name was Margaret but nothing has been found to indicate that there were children.

The 1784 Halifax County census lists Thomas Pasteur, one female, and five blacks. The 1790 census of the same county, however, records a family consisting of himself, four females, and one other free person. The latter probably was the Molly Gordon who indentured herself to him on 10 Oct. 1787 for ninety-nine years. Pasteur was a Mason and a member of the Royal White Lodge in Halifax. He died in Buncombe County.