A Warren County historian was not a fan of J. Williams Thorne.

Manly Wade Wellman does not write much about the expelled legislator in "The County of Warren," a history of Thorne's adopted county.

On page 170, he notes that Thorne and another Radical Republican (who was "considered especially spiteful toward old Confederates") were candidates in 1875:

Thorne was elected, and though in February he was expelled from the State House of Representatives and ejected by the sergeant-at-arms, became high in the councils of the depleted Republican party of the State.

The author tips his hand again later when he writes that a few years later "the chafing rule of carpetbaggers and Radicals was only an unhappy memory."

A footnote also kicks some dirt on Thorne's grave.

"Thorne is almost unremembered in Warren County today," it reads.