The T.F.Norton Decoys

Who the hell is T.F. Norton ?
   
I have been researching this question for over a decade and I have found no answer. We don't know what the initials stand for and we don't know where he lived.  I have found some possibilities, but none of the possibilities could be connected to the decoys made by Charles Sumner Bunn (1865 -1952).  This has become the eternal question when it comes to the Charles Bunn shorebird decoys donated to the Museums at Stony Brook by the prominent Long Island Herrick family who wrongly attributed them to a Bill Bowman.

The well-known story of the Herrick family states they purchased the decoys directly from Bill Bowman, yet the majority of the decoys donated to the Museums at Stony Brook have a T.F.Norton brand on them, which has always been one of the many puzzling parts of the Herrick family's Bowman story.  If bought directly from Bowman, why do they carry the T.F. Norton brand? Over the years, this glaring hole in the Bowman story should have by itself caused the reevaluation of the Herrick/Bowman story, yet even today that is glossed over by the people who won't give up the Bowman myth.

I am certain the T.F. Norton listed in Stony Brook Museum's book, Gunner's Paradise, as a carpenter from Hewlett, Nassau County N.Y. can be eliminated by his social status alone.  The clients of Charles Bunn who purchased this quality of hunting decoy were wealthy sports, not carpenters.  Many of the well-known clients of Bunn were not only from the same social circle, they were related by marriage and/or blood.  Many of these families repeatedly used ancestral names in succeeding generations.  These people were also bound together by wealth and business; attorneys, bankers, insurances company owners.  They belong to the same clubs.  They were not carpenters.

One of the ancestral names to descend through these families is the name Newbold.  According to the book, The Newbold Lawrence Family (1931), the name originated in America with Michael Newbold who came to America between 1665-1675.  We find this name reflected  in multiple examples; Newbold Trotter Lawrence, Newbold Leroy Edgar, Newbold Herrick, and many more.  You also find the Lawrence name used by many descendants

I have tried researching every name combination with Norton I could come up with and so far no luck.  The prominent Trotter family of Philadelphia is connected to the the Lawrence family, so I have tried to discover a person from the right time period.  A Norton with the first name Trotter, but to no avail so far.

The Herrick family at one time should have been able to establish the connection with T.F. Norton because without question, they had originally been made for this mysterious T.F.Norton.  So after years of research, the only thing I can confidently say is the decoys were made by Charles Sumner Bunn, and I still have not discovered who the hell T.F.Norton was, but I am still researching.