Thomas Dansie ran an ordinary on the Pamunkey River in Virginia, and GW often stopped there when he was traveling between Mount Vernon and Williamsburg. Dansie also had a wharf on the King William County side of the Pamunkey River, and in 1754, the Virginia legislature authorized him to run a ferry between his wharf and the causeway that he had been permitted to build from the south shore of the Pamunkey to an area in New Kent County. The ferry that Dansie operated was close to the ferry at Thomas Claiborne’s landing on the Pamunkey.

Dansie was first married to Frances Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s sister-in-law, and he subsequently married Ann Dandridge, Martha's first cousin.