Thomas Trueman (ca. 1625-December 6, 1685) was a British attorney who also became a merchant, planter, politician and controversial military officer in the Maryland Colony. He was impeached on one of three counts by the Upper House of the Maryland Assembly for killing several Susquehannock emissarys under a flag of truce months before Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. Trueman had served in both houses of the Maryland Assembly before that conflict, and although dismissed from the Governor's Council after that impeachment in 1676, he served another term in 1683-84.
Early and family life
Trueman was probably born in Nottingham, England, around 1625. His father was also named Thomas Truman and the family included two additional brothers who also emigrated to the Maryland colony, as well as two daughters who remained in England. The eldest brother, Dr. James Truman (1622-1672), a physician, became a justice of the peace and commissioner in Calvert County, Maryland by 1669. He married Ann Storer and had three daughters who became this man's heirs, as discussed below. In 1665 Nathaniel Truman (d. 1676) arrived in Maryland and became a judge in Calvert County by 1669. He ultimately left his estate to his sisters Mary Truman and Eliza Stringer in England, and to this man as well as Nathaniel's sister in law Jane Skinner and the same three nieces as would this man nearly a decade later. They also had a Nottingham-born cousin, Henry Truman (1628-1696), son of Rev. Henry Truman, who emigrated to Maryland in 1677 and died about two decades later.
Career
Truman emigrated to the Maryland colony as a free adult in 1651, accompanied by two servants. By 1666 he was considered a "gentleman". His emigration occurred during a tobacco boom, which ended in the early 1660s as the Navigation Acts of 1660 forced tobacco sales to be made to British merchants, which led to massive oversupply and a crash in prices. Nonetheless "Esq." was attached to Truman's name by 1667.