Tho-Thr: Thomas through Throop

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


THOMAS, Francis, 1799-1876, lawyer, statesman.  Opposed slavery in Maryland State Constitutional Convention of 1850.  Fought, in the constitutional convention of 1850-51, the system of representation whereby the small slave-holding counties held power over the populous western counties.  Governor of Maryland, 1841-1844.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland.  In Congress December 1831-March 1841 and 1861-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, p. 78; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 429-430; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; M. P. Andrews, Tercentenary History of Maryland (1925), volume I; E. S. Riley, A History of the General Assembly of Maryland (1905); C. W. Sams and E. S. Riley, The Bench and Bar of Maryland (1904); J. W. Thomas and T. J. C. Williams, History of Allegany County, Maryland (1923), volume I)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 429-430:

THOMAS, FRANCIS (February 3, 1799-January 22, 1876), congress man from Maryland and governor, was born at "Montevue" near Petersville, Frederick County, Maryland, the seventh child of John and Eleanor (McGill) Thomas, and the descendant of Hugh Thomas who emigrated from Wales to Pennsylvania about 1702. He matriculated at St. John's College, Annapolis, but turned directly to the study of law, when classes closed temporarily at that institution. Opening an office in Frederick after admission to the bar in 1820, he soon became one of the leading lawyers in western Maryland. His record before 1841 was a succession of triumphs. In 1822, as a stripling of twenty-three and a Democrat, he won election to the state assembly from a Federalist section on the issue of legislative reapportionment. He appeared as a successful candidate for the same position in 1827 and 1829, and even won the speakership of the house in his last term. The manner in which he handled the house led to his being made congressional candidate the next year. For ten years, 1831-41, he sat in Congress, where his eloquence and parliamentary skill made him an active participant in most of the important legislation. As chairman of the judiciary committee, he became a defender and friend of Jackson. For a brief period, 1839-40, he was president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company and also found time to lead a revolt for popular election of state senators in Maryland. Though temporarily unsuccessful, this ultimately brought reorganization of the legislative department. It was during his congressional campaign of 1840 that he became involved in a duel with William Price. His nomination and election for governor in 1841 ushered in the most tempestuous period of his life. His marriage to Sally Campbell McDowell, the daughter of Governor James McDowell [q.v.] of Virginia on June 8, 1841, had united the forty-two-year old bachelor to a twenty-year old girl. Discord manifested itself in a few weeks. They were divorced after an unusually unsavory scandal during which he issued a pamphlet, Statement of Francis Thomas (1845), setting forth, entirely without reserve, the details of the courtship, marriage, and estrangement. Ten years later his wife married John Miller, 1819-1895 [q.v.], a Presbyterian clergyman. The quarrel and divorce involved Thomas in a libel suit and led him to wild charges against John Carroll Le Grand, whom he had just appointed judge. Ultimately, it cost him his possible opportunity of being president because of the bitterness of his father-in-law in the convention of 1844.

He did not allow his domestic difficulties to interfere with his duties as governor. His chief contribution was to save the state from repudiation, although it was heavily involved in debt for internal improvements. After his governorship he led the life of a recluse until the Civil War, emerging only to fight, in the constitutional convention of 1850-51, the system of representation whereby the small slave-holding counties held power over the populous western counties, and to run unsuccessfully in 1853 as an independent candidate for Congress. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted a volunteer regiment of 3,000, though he left the command to younger men, and inspired union sentiment in western Maryland with his eloquence. In 1861 he returned to Congress as a Unionist and served until 1869. During Reconstruction he whole-heartedly supported the extreme Radicals. Upon his retirement from Congress, he was appointed in 1870 internal revenue collector for Maryland. He resigned to accept the post of minister to Peru, where he served from 1872 to 1875. The remaining year of his life he occupied with law practice and with sheep-raising on a large tract of land near Frankville. He was killed by an engine of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad.

[M. P. Andrews, Tercentenary History of Maryland (1925), volume I; E. S. Riley, A History of the General Assembly of Maryland (1905); C. W. Sams and E. S. Riley, The Bench and Bar of Maryland (1904); J. W. Thomas and T. J. C. Williams, History of Allegany County, Maryland (1923), volume I; T. J.C. Williams, History of Frederick County" (1910), volume I; L. E. Blauch, "Education and the Maryland Constitution Convention, 1850-51," Maryland History Magazine, June 1930; New York Herald, April 8, 1845; Inquirer and National Gazette (Philadelphia), November 13, 1845; Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser and Sun (Baltimore), January 24, 1876.]

E. L.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 78:

THOMAS, Francis, governor of Maryland, born in Frederick county, Md., 3 February, 1799; died near Frankville. Md., 22 January, 1876. He was graduated at St. John's college, Annapolis, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1820, and began practice in Frankville. He was a member of the state house of representatives in 1822, 1827, and 1829, being speaker the last year, was elected to five consecutive congresses, serving from 5 December, 1831, till 3 March, 1841, was president of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal company in 1839-'40, and governor of Maryland in 1841-'4. During his canvass for the governorship he fought a duel with William Price. He was a member of the State constitutional convention in 1850, and was instrumental in having a measure adopted that weakened the power of the slave-holding counties. He was again in congress from 1861 till 1869. During the civil war Mr. Thomas supported the Union cause, raised a volunteer brigade of 3,000 men, but he refused a command. He was a delegate to the Loyalist convention of 1866, and subsequently opposed President Johnson. He was appointed collector of internal revenue for the Cumberland district, and served from April, 1870, till he was appointed minister to Peru, 25 March, 1872. He held this post till 9 July, 1875, and afterward retired to his farm near Frankland, where he was killed by a locomotive while walking on the railroad-track. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 78.


THOMAS, James H., Edgartown, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1839-40.


THOMAS, John, New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


THOMAS, Lorenzo, 1804-1875, Major General, U.S. Army. Secretary of War Stanton sent him to the Mississippi Valley in March 1863 to organize negro regiments.  

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 85; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 441-442; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 516).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 441-442:

THOMAS, LORENZO (October 1804-March 2, 1875), soldier, was born in New Castle, Delaware, the son of Evan and Elizabeth (Sherer) Thomas. There was a military tradition in the Thomas family and in 1819 Lorenzo entered the United States Military Academy. At his graduation in 1823 he stood seventeenth in his class and was made a second lieutenant in the 4th Infantry. Subsequently he rose to the rank of major (1848) in this regiment. Except for service as quartermaster in the Seminole War (1836-37), his early duties were mostly of a routine nature. He was appointed assistant adjutant-general at Washington in 1838, with the rank of brevet major, and remained there almost continuously until 1846, when he joined the volunteer division of Major-General William O. Butler [q.v.] as chief of staff during the Mexican War. "For gallant and meritorious conduct" at Monterey he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, September 23, 1846. At the close of the war he returned to his duties as assistant adjutant-general at Washington and continued in that capacity until designated a s chief of staff to Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott in 1853. Upon the resignation of Colonel Samuel Cooper [q.v.], the adjutant-general of the army, Thomas was promoted to a colonelcy and put in charge of that office, March 7, 1861. Five months later he was made adjutant-general and given the rank of brigadier-general. Like other bureaus of the War Department, when the Civil War came, the office over which Thomas presided proved hopelessly inadequate in equipment and personnel and gradually had to be expanded. Meanwhile, he was subjected to sharp criticism from some of the zealous war governors because he seemed too slow in furnishing state quotas and other necessary information. There apparently was considerable laxity and inefficiency in his bureau and many persons surmised that he was "lukewarm" regarding the war, but there was no sound basis for this suspicion. In what was probably an effort to be rid of him, Secretary Stanton ordered him to the Mississippi Valley in March 1863 to organize negro regiments. This work, together with arranging for the exchange of prisoners and the consolidation of depleted regiments, kept him occupied until the end of the war. He was brevetted major-general on March 13, 1865. The next year Stanton sent him on an inspection tour of the provost marshal general's office and in 1867 on an extended inspection tour of the national cemeteries. While he was engaged in the latter work the difficulties between President Johnson and Stanton came to a head, and the President, desiring to have a "rightminded" man in the adjutant general's office, directed Thomas on February 13, 1868, to resume full charge of the bureau. On February 21, Johnson dismissed Stanton, appointed Thomas secretary ad interim, and requested him to take possession of the department. The selection was unfortunate, for the Adjutant-General proved to be a vain and garrulous person. When he publicly boasted that he would oust the Secretary by force if necessary, Stanton ordered his arrest for violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Although immediately admitted to bail and discharged within a week, the General failed to displace the recalcitrant Secretary, the contest between them degenerating into opera bouffe. Thomas' testimony and his naivete in the impeachment trial of the President effectively dispelled the charge that he and Johnson had conspired forcibly to eject Stanton and helped to win for the President an acquittal. After the adjournment Thomas resumed his inspection duties, but was retired from active service on February 22, 1869. He died in Washington six years later.

[G. W. Cullum, Biography Register Officers and Graduates U. S. Military Academy (3rd ed., 1891); F. B. Heitman, Historical Register and Directory U.S. Army (1903), volume I; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Diary of Gideon Welles (1911), volume III; Trial of Andrew Johnson (1868),   volume I; G. C. Gorham, Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton (1899), volume II; Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, November 25, 1865; Army and Navy Journal, March 6, 1875; National Republican (Washington), March 3, 1875; bibliog. of article on Edwin M. Stanton.]

A H M

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 85:

THOMAS, Lorenzo, soldier, born in New Castle, Del., 26 October, 1804; died in Washington, D. C., 2 March, 1875. His father, Evan, was of Welsh extraction, and served in the militia during the war of 1812, and one of his uncles was a favorite officer of General Washington. He was at first destined for mercantile pursuits, but received an appointment to the U. S. military academy, and was graduated there in 1823. He served in the 4th infantry in Florida till 1831, and again in the Florida war of 1836-'7, and as chief of staff of the army in that state in 1839-'40, becoming captain, 23 September, 1836, and major on the staff and assistant adjutant-general, 7 July, 1838. He there did duty in the last-named office at Washington till the Mexican war, in which he was chief of staff of General William O. Butler in 1846-'8, and of the Army of Mexico till June, 1848, and received the brevet of lieutenant-colonel for gallantry at Monterey. He was then adjutant-general at army headquarters, Washington, till 1853, and chief of staff to General Winfield Scott till 1861, when he was brevetted brigadier-general on 7 May, and made adjutant-general of the army on 3 August, with the full rank of brigadier-general. Here he served till 1863, when he was intrusted for two years with the organization of colored troops in the southern states. When President Johnson removed Edwin M. Stanton from his post as secretary of war he appointed General Thomas secretary ad interim, 21 February, 1868, but, owing to Stanton's refusal to vacate, Thomas did not enter on the office. He was brevetted major-general, United States army, on 13 March, 1865, for services during the civil war, and on 22 February, 1869, he was retired. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 85. 


THOMAS, N. P., Whippany, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-1840.


THOMAS, Phillip Evan, 1776-1861, Baltimore, Maryland, merchant, banker, Quaker, social activist.  Vice-President, 1833-40, member of the Baltimore auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  Co-founder of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 85; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 442; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 70, 111)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 85:

THOMAS, Philip Evan, merchant, born in Mount Radnor, Montgomery county, Md., 11 November, 1776; died in Yonkers, New York, 1 September, 1861. His ancestor, Philip, came to this country from Wales in 1651, and was a member of the Society of Friends. The son settled in Baltimore, Md., and in 1800 established himself in the hardware business. He was president of the Mechanics’ bank for many years, and president of the Maryland Bible society. He was a member of the Indian committee from the Baltimore yearly meeting of Quakers to the Indians at Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1804, and through his efforts the intrigues of the Ogden land company with the chiefs to dispossess the remnant of the Six Nations of their reservations in western New York were defeated, the chiefs were deposed, and a republican form of government was established. Mr. Thomas was an originator of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, resigning his post as director of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal to give his attention to this enterprise. He was the first president of the company, which office he resigned in 1836. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


THOME, Arthur, Augusta, Kentucky, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1839-1840.



THOME, James A., 1809-1873, August, Kentucky, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist, educator, clergyman.  Father was a slaveholder.  Thome was a member and Vice President, 1839-1840, of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) and professor at Oberlin College.  Took part in the famous Lane Seminary debates on slavery in 1833 and 1834.  He supported immediate emancipation.  He left Lane for Oberlin.  He was sent by the AASS to observe the effect of emancipation in the West Indies.  He and Horace Kimball, who was the editor of the Herald of Freedom, wrote their account “Emancipation in the West Indies,” which was published in 1838.  It was an important report, utilized by the abolitionist cause in determining the feasibility of freeing slaves in the U.S.  After the Civil War, Thome raised funds for people newly freed from slavery. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961m pp., 152, 155, 174; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 68, 140; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 272; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 91-93). 


THOMPSON, Cyrus, LeRoy, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1843-1846.


THOMPSON, Daniel Pierce (October 1, 1795-June 6, 1868), author, lawyer, political leader.  Member of the Liberty Party.  Editor, from 1849-1856, of the anti-slavery newspaper, Green Mountain Freeman.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 454)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 454:

THOMPSON, DANIEL PIERCE (October 1, 1795-June 6, 1868), author, lawyer, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel and Rebecca (Parker) Thompson. On his father's side he was descended from James Thompson, who settled in Massachusetts before 1632; on his mother's he was apparently descended from Ezekiel Cheever [q.v.], seventeenth-century educator (Flitcroft, post, p. 317). In 1800 his father, being unsuccessful in business, moved to a small farm at Berlin, Vermont. Thus Daniel grew up in a frontier settlement in which there was neither a library nor an adequate school. At sixteen, however, he chanced upon a volume of English poetry, and this book opened a new world to him. He worked hard on the farm, studied and later taught in the district schools, saved money, and finally, after a winter's residence at the Randolph- Danville Academy at Danville, Vermont, entered Middlebury College with advanced standing. While in college he contributed a number of poems and essays to periodicals. After his graduation in 1820, he went to Virginia (probably Culpeper County), where he remained for three or four years as a tutor in a wealthy family. During this period he studied law, obtained an interview with Thomas Jefferson ("A Talk with Jefferson," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1863), and was admitted to the bar.

Returning to Montpelier in 1823 or 1824, Thompson began the practice of law, and soon became prominent in the political and cultural life of Vermont. He served as judge of probate for Washington County (1837-40; 1841-42), clerk of the county court (1844-46), and secretary of state for Vermont (1853-55). He compiled The Laws of Vermont ... Including the Year 1834 (1835), was one of the founders of the Vermont Historical Society, and during 1840 served as secretary of the state education society. He took part in the anti-Masonic controversy to the extent of publishing, in the guise of "A Member of the Vermont Bar," The Adventures of Timothy Peacock, Esquire (1835), a satirical novel concerned with "the amusing adventures of a Masonic Quixot." In the same year he wrote for the New England Galaxy a story called "May Martin, or the Money Diggers," which won a prize of fifty dollars, and thus encouraged him to continue with the writing of fiction as an avocation. Originally a Jeffersonian Democrat, Thompson later became active in the Liberty party, editing from 1849 to 1856 the Green Mountain Freeman, a weekly paper identified with the anti-slavery movement. In 1856 he joined the Republicans because they were making opposition to the extension of slavery the chief issue in their presidential campaign. He was well known as a lyceum lecturer. On August 31, 1831, he was married to Eunice Knight Robinson, by whom he had six children.

Thompson's claim to recognition is based mainly on his achievement as a historical novelist in the school of Cooper. Through his fiction he probably did more than any other person to popularize the early history of Vermont. Local tradition represents him as wandering through the country with his fishing rod, stopping at intervals to chat with some old settler by the roadside. He would spend hours listening to stories about Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, and Colonel Stark; and he kept careful notes of all he heard. Influenced by Scott and Cooper, he blended history with romance in a half dozen novels of adventure, of which the best known is The Green Mountain Boys (1839). This book deals with the land-grant controversy between New York and New Hampshire, and with such incidents of the Revolution as Ethan Allen's capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the battle of Hubbardton. Its popularity is evidenced by the sale of fifty editions before 1860 and sixty editions by 1900. A sequel, The Rangers, appeared in 1851. Another novel, Locke Amsden (1847), deserves mention for its truthful record of frontier life, its autobiographical significance, and its interest to the student of American education. Among his other publications are Gaut Gurley (1857), The Doomed Chief (1860), History of the Town of Montpelier (1860), and Centeola (1864). An old-fashioned Yankee with a keen sense of humor, Thompson possessed genuine narrative ability, but fell far short of Cooper in imaginative power.

[See Leander Thompson, Memorial of James Thompson (1887); E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopedia of American Lit. (2 volumes, 1855), which contains a brief autobiographical memoir; Biographical Encyclopedia of Vermont (1885), pp. 256-60; D. F. Wheaton, in Vermont Historical Gazetteer, volume IV (1882), pp. 69-72; obituary in Burlington Times, June 9, 1868. The dates of Thompson's public offices are from J. M. Comstock, A List of the Principal Civil Officers of Vermont (1918). The only full biography is J. E. Flitcroft, The Novelist of Vermont (1929), which contains Thompson's unfinished novel, "The Honest Lawyer."]

J.E.F.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888:

THOMPSON, Daniel Pierce, author, born in Charlestown (now a part of Boston), Massachusetts, 1 October, 1793; died in Montpelier, Vermont, 6 June, 1868. He was the grandson of Daniel, who was a cousin of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, and was killed at the battle of Lexington. He was brought up on a farm, prepared himself for college under difficulties, taught for one winter, and then entered Middlebury college, where he was graduated in 1820. Going to Virginia as a family tutor, he studied law there, and was admitted to the bar in 1823, after which he returned to Vermont and settled in Montpelier. He was register of probate in 1824, and clerk of the legislature in 1830-'3, and was then appointed to compile the “Laws of Vermont from 1824 down to and including the Year 1834” (Montpelier, 1835). He was judge of probate from 1837 till 1840, from 1843 till 1845 clerk of the supreme and county courts, and from 1853 till 1855 secretary of state. From 1849 till 1856 he edited a weekly political paper called the “Green Mountain Free man.” He was a popular lecturer before lyceums and orator on public occasions. Mr. Thompson began to contribute poems and sketches to periodicals while he was in college, and continued to write frequently for the newspapers and magazines, besides publishing political pamphlets. He took part in the anti-Masonic controversy, and published a satirical novel on the subject, entitled “The Adventures of Timothy Peacock, Esq., or Freemasonry Practically Illustrated,” which appeared under the pen-name of “A Member of the Vermont Bar” (Middlebury, 1835). In 1835 he wrote for the “New England Galaxy,” of Boston, a prize tale called “May Martin, or the Money-Diggers,” which was issued in book-form (Montpelier, 1835), and reprinted in London. Next appeared “The Green Mountain Boys,” a romance, in which the principal men connected with the history of Vermont in the Revolutionary period are brought into the plot (Montpelier, 1840; republished in Boston and London); “Locke Amsden, or the Schoolmaster” (Boston, 1845); “Lucy Hosmer, or the Guardian and the Ghost” (1848); and “The Rangers, or the Tory's Daughter” (1851). His later romances are “Tales of the Green Mountains” (1852); “Gaut Gurley, or the Trappers of Lake Umbagog” (1857); “The Doomed Chief, or Two Hundred Years Ago,” based on the story of King Philip (Philadelphia, 1860); and “Centeola, and other Tales” (New York, 1864). He was also the author of a “History of Montpelier, 1781-1860, with Biographical Sketches” (Montpelier, 1860). In later life he published monographs on topics of American history and on biographical subjects in various magazines. A novel, with the title of “The Honest Lawyer, or the Fair Castaway,” was left unfinished. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


THOMPSON, E. N., Connecticut, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1836.


THOMPSON, Edwin, 1809-1888, reformer, abolitionist, orator, clergyman, temperance reformer, Society of Friends, Quaker traveling anti-slavery lecturer. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 89)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 89:

THOMPSON, Edwin, reformer, born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in July, 1809; died in East Walpole, Massachusetts, 22 May, 1888. He was of Quaker descent, and early interested himself in the anti-slavery movement. At the suggestion of Wendell Phillips, he became a public speaker in its furtherance, travelling through the state, often on foot, lecturing in churches and school-houses, and winning a reputation as an orator by his fluency and great fund of anecdotes. While speaking in New Bedford, he roused Frederick Douglass to take up active work in behalf of his race. He was also interested from an early period in the temperance reform, which he did much to promote. Mr. Thompson was ordained as a Universalist clergyman in 1840, and afterward resided at East Walpole. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 89.


THOMPSON, George, 1804-1878, English abolitionist, reformer, orator.  Helped organize and spoke to 150 abolitionist groups in the United States.  Worked with abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison. He was often threatened by pro-slavery mobs and was threatened with death in Boston. 

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 43, 221; Sinha, 2016, pp. 221, 233, 234, 241, 253, 272-275, 278, 290, 434, 565; Wilson, 1872, Volume 2, p. 69; Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 28, 49-50, 69, 172-173, 221, 260, 260n, 282, 310-312, 311n, 320n; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 90; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 679-680; Rice, C. Duncan, The Scots Abolitionists, 1833-1861, 1981; Temperely, Howard, British Anti-Slavery, 1833-1870, 1972)
Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, pp. 28, 49-50, 69, 172-173, 221, 260, 260n, 282, 310-312, 311n, 320n; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 90)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 90:

THOMPSON, George, English reformer, born in Liverpool, England, 18 June, 1804; died in Leeds, England, 7 October, 1878. He entered actively into the agitation against slavery in the British colonies, and contributed largely to its downfall, and subsequently to that of the apprentice system. Afterward he joined the Anti-corn-law league, and also took an active part in forming the India association. In 1834, at the request of William Lloyd Garrison and others, he came to the United States to speak in behalf of the abolition of slavery. He addressed meetings in various parts of the northern states, and his efforts led to the formation of more than 150 anti-slavery societies; but he was often threatened by mobs, and finally in Boston, Massachusetts, escaped death only by fleeing in a small row-boat to an English vessel and going to St. John, New Brunswick, whence he sailed for England in November, 1835. Mr. Thompson's visit created such excitement that President Jackson denounced him in a message to congress. He made a second visit to this country in 1851, and another during the civil war, when a public reception was given to him in the house of representatives, at which President Lincoln and his cabinet were present. He aided greatly in preventing the recognition of the southern Confederacy by the British government. Mr. Thompson was also concerned in the work of the National parliamentary reform association. In 1847 he was chosen a member of parliament for the Tower Hamlets. About 1870 a testimonial fund was raised for him by his admirers in this country and England. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 90.


THOMPSON, George, died 1893, American abolitionist.  In 1841, planned escape of slaves, and was arrested in Palmyra, Missouri with Alonson Work and James Burr.  They were arrested and tried.  Thompson served four years and eleven months.  Wrote about the experience in Prison Life and Reflections.


THOMPSON, Henry, radical abolitionist, son-in-law to abolitionist John Brown (see entry for John Brown).

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 206).  Dictionary of American Biography)


THOMPSON, John Edgar, Underground Railroad activist.


THOMPSON, Joseph Parrish (August 7, 1819-September 20, 1879), Congregational clergyman, editor, author, abolitionist.  He was one of the leaders of the home missionary movement in his denomination, was the instigator of the Albany Congregationalist Conference of 1852, and worked unceasingly to arouse public opinion, in behalf of the negro slaves.  Wrote Christianity and Emancipation (1863). 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 93; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 464)

Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 464-465:

THOMPSON, JOSEPH PARRISH (August 7, 1819-September 20, 1879), Congregational clergyman, editor, author, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Isaac and Mary Anne (Hanson) Thompson, and a descendant of John Thompson who emigrated from London to Stratford, Connecticut, in 1635. His father was a druggist. Thompson graduated from Yale College in 1838, studied for the ministry at Andover and New Haven, and, as a favorite pupil of Nathaniel W. Taylor [q.v.], was drawn early into an influential circle of clergymen. In consequence he was ordained, October 28, 1840, as pastor of the Chapel Street Church (later the Church of the Redeemer) at New Haven and was called thence in 1845 to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, one of the strategic outposts of New England Congregationalism. To this large and discriminating congregation he ministered successfully for a quarter- century. He was one of the conspicuous leaders of the home missionary movement in his denomination, was the instigator of the Albany Congregationalist Conference of 1852, and worked unceasingly to arouse public opinion, in behalf of the negro slaves. He made two visits to Europe, Palestine, and Egypt, and acquired some esteem as an Egyptologist. While still in New Haven he had helped Leonard Bacon [q.v.] to found the New Englander, and he wrote frequently for it and for Bibliotheca Sacra. With Bacon, Richard Salter Storrs, and Joshua Leavitt [qq.v.] he was a member of the editorial board of the Independent from its organization at the close of 1848, but as the result of differences with the proprietor, Henry Chandler Bowen [q.v.], he resigned in 1862. During this period he published some fifteen books, besides numerous pamphlets, sermons, lectures, and contributions to periodicals and reference works. He wrote well, and evidently with ease. Among his books were memoirs of the younger Timothy Dwight (1844), David Hale (1850), David Tappan Stoddard (1858), and Bryant Gray (1864); Egypt Past and Present (1856); Love and Penalty, or Eternal Punishment consistent with the Fatherhood of God (1860); Man in Genesis and in Geology (1869); The Theology of Christ from His Own Words (1870); and Home Worship (1871). He had no new ideas and was a thorough scholar in no department of knowledge, but he readily assimilated ideas and information from all sides and presented them in an intelligible form, he served no cause or institution perfunctorily, and his capacity for work was awe-inspiring. He was married twice: on May 5, 1841, to Lucy Olivia Bartlett of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who bore him five children and died in 1852; and on October 25, 1853, to Elizabeth Coit Gilman of New York, a sister of Daniel Coit Gilman [q.v.]. By her he had one son, William Gilman Thompson [q. v.]. Two of his sons fought in the Civil War; the elder, John Hanson, died in the service and was commemorated by his father in The Sergeant's Memorial (1863). Thompson himself was a delegate of the Sanitary Commission with Sherman's army.

In 1871 his health broke down, and with scant hope of future usefulness ahead of him he resigned discharge. William Mackergo Taylor [q.v.] became his successor. His congregation and some personal friends presented him with $70,000. He removed to Germany and established himself in Berlin, where he worked desultorily on a monograph on the Hebrews in ancient Egypt. As his health improved he appeared in society, preached frequently, and soon became an active publicist, devoting himself to the complicated ecclesiastical problems of the Reich, and to strengthening comity between the United States and Germany. He lectured in England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy; published several volumes, including Church and State in the United States (1873), The United States as a Nation (1877), and The Workman: His False Friends and His True Friends (1879); interested himself in international law; attended conventions of all kinds and delivered numerous occasional addresses. He spoke German and French readily. He kept alert mentally to the last, in spite of pain, headaches, partial paralysis, and the humiliation of an attempt to blackmail him. He died of an apoplectic stroke and was buried in the graveyard of the Jerusalem Church in Berlin. His brother-in-law edited a posthumous volume of American Comments on European Questions (1884).

[Arthur Gilman, The Gilman Family (1869); Biographical Record of the class of 1838 in Yale College (1879) and Supplement (1889); Obituary Record Graduates Yale College .... June 1880 (1880); Broadway Tabernacle Church: Its History and World (1871); Susan H. Ward, The History of the Broadway Tabernacle Church (1901); obituary in New York Daily Tribune, September 22, 1879; obituary and editorial in Philadelphia Press, September 22, 1879; Independent, September 25, 1879 (editorial): Leonard Bacon, Ibid .. October 2. 1879; G. W. Gilman, Ibid., October r6, 1879; W. H. Ward, Ibid., December 10, 1908.]

G. H. G.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 93:

THOMPSON, Joseph Parrish, scholar, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 7 August, 1819; died in Berlin, Germany, 20 September, 1879. He was graduated at Yale in 1838, studied theology for a few months in Andover seminary, and then at Yale from 1839 till 1840, when he was ordained as a Congregational minister. He was pastor of the Chapel street church in New Haven from that time till 1845, and during this period was one of the founders of the “New Englander.” From 1845 till his resignation in 1871 he had charge of the Broadway tabernacle in New York city. Dr. Thompson devoted much time to the study of Egyptology, in which he attained high rank. In 1852-'3 he visited Palestine, Egypt, and other eastern countries, and from that time he published continual contributions to this branch of learning in periodicals, the transactions of societies, and cyclopædias. He lectured on Egyptology in Andover seminary in 1871, and in 1872-'9 resided in Berlin, Germany, occupied in oriental studies, took an active part in the social, political, and scientific discussions, and was a member of various foreign societies, before which he delivered addresses, and contributed essays to their publications. These have been issued under the title of “American Comments on European Questions” (New York, 1884). In 1875 Dr. Thompson went to England to explain at public meetings “the attitude of Germany in regard to Ultramontanism,” for which service he was rewarded by the thanks of the German government, expressed in person by Prince Bismarck, and Dr. Thompson originated the plan of the Albany Congregationalist convention in 1852, and was a manager of the American Congregational union and the American home missionary society. He also aided in establishing the New York “Independent.” Harvard gave him the degree of D. D. in 1856, and the University of New York that of LL. D. in 1868. He published “Memoir of Timothy Dwight” (New Haven, 1844); “Lectures to Young Men” (New York, 1846); “Hints to Employers” (1847); “Memoir of David Hale” (1850); “Foster on Missions, with a Preliminary Essay” (1850); “Stray Meditations” (1852; revised ed., entitled “The Believer's Refuge," 1857); “The Invaluable Possession” (1856); “Egypt, Past and Present” (Boston, 1856); “The Early Witnesses” (1857); “Memoir of Reverend David T. Stoddard” (New York, 1858); “The Christian Graces” (1859); “The College as a Religious Institution” (1859); “Love and Penalty” (1860); “Bryant Gray” (1863); “Christianity and Emancipation” (1863); “The Holy Comforter” (1866); “Man in Genesis and Geology” (1869); “Theology of Christ, from His Own Words” (1870); “Home Worship” (1871); “Church and State in the United States” (1874); “Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, for the Young” (1875); “The United States as a Nation,” lectures (1877); and “The Workman: his False Friends and his True Friends” (1879).  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


THOMPSON, Joseph Pascal, 1818-1894, African American, former slave, clergyman, medical doctor, abolitionist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 148)


THOMPSON, Phishey, Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Treasurer, 1839-1841. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


THOMPSON, Richard Wigginton (June 9, 1809-February 9, 1900), lawyer, politician, author. He was a presidential elector, first on the Whig and later on the Republican ticket. Presidents Taylor, Fillmore, and Lincoln made him offers of offices, but he declined. He was active in the secession controversies and during the Civil War served as provost marshal for the Terre Haute district.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 468-469:

THOMPSON, RICHARD WIGGINTON (June 9, 1809-February 9, 1900), lawyer, politician, author, was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, the son of William Mills Thompson, a merchant and lawyer, and Catherine Wigginton (Broadus) Thompson. His great-grandfather, the Reverend John Thompson, born near Belfast, Ireland, emigrated to Virginia in 1739. His mother was the daughter of Major William Broadus, an officer of the Revolution. Thompson received a "good English and classical education." When twenty-two years old he left Virginia and after a short residence in Louisville, Kentucky, settled in Lawrence County, Indiana, where he taught school, worked in a store, and studied law at night. Coincident with his migration he sloughed off most of the political and cultural viewpoints that had been the heritage of his Virginia birth and took on those predominant in his adopted community. In 1834 he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law at Bedford. For four terms, 1834 to 1838, he was a member of the Indiana legislature; and in 1840 and again in 1846 he was elected to the Senate. In 1843 he moved to Terre Haute. On May 5, 1836, he married Harriet Eliza Gardiner (d. March 25, 1888), who bore him eight children. On several occasions Thompson was a presidential elector, first on the Whig and later on the Republican ticket. Presidents Taylor, Fillmore, and Lincoln made him proffers of offices, but he declined. He was active in the secession controversies and during the Civil War served as provost marshal for the Terre Haute district. He was a delegate to Republican National Conventions in 1868, 1876, and 1892, and in the last named nominated Benjamin Harrison for the presidency. In 1877 he was appointed secretary of the navy in the Hayes administration (appointment confirmed, March 10, 1877). It has been affirmed that this was the only major appointment made by Hayes that was "dictated entirely by political considerations and it was the only bad one" (Eckenrode, post, p. 242). While holding this post he took the chairmanship of the American Committee of the Panama Canal Company at a salary of $25,000 yearly, thinking this no bar to his retaining his post in the cabinet, whereupon Hayes notified him "that his resignation (unoffered) had been accepted" (Ibid., p. 303). Extremely partisan in politics, intolerant in religion, a lobbyist for railroads, Thompson was throughout his active life a figure about whom angry controversy swirled. Few of his contemporaries among public men were so frequently attacked on ethical grounds. Apart from politics and law the major interests of Thompson's life were speechmaking and writing, and to these he devoted himself tirelessly whenever opportunity offered. His published writings include two volumes. of historical essays, Recollections of Sixteen Presidents (1894), of considerable literary and historical merit; The History of Protective Tariff Laws (1888), a work of special pleading; and two volumes of polemics against the Catholic Church, The Papacy and the Civil Power (1876) and The Footprints of the Jesuits (1894), written, it has been said, while Thompson was "manifestly inspired by an undue fear of the Pope's protruding his official sway into American political life" (Bowers, post, p. 273).

In his personal relations Thompson was "a man of benevolence and unassuming manners," and throughout his life had hosts of friends, among them many who were at times his outspoken critics. In his old age the people of his state applied to him the affectionate designation of "the Grand Old Man." He loved children and never let pass an opportunity to be in their company. In his habits he was temperate, except in respect to smoking; for fifty years prior to his death he smoked an average of twenty cigars a day. He died in Terre Haute, Indiana.

[See Who's Who in America, 1899-1900; Richard W. Thompson Memorial (copyright 1906); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Charles Lanman, Directory of the U. S. Congress (1869); A Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men ... of Indiana (2 volumes, 1880); G. W. Taylor, ed., Biographical Sketches ... of the Bench and Bar of Indiana (1895), which contains a rather florid eulogy; Logan Esarey, A History of Indiana, volume II (1918); Charles Roll, Indiana, One Hundred and Fifty Years of American Development (1931), volume V, pp. 461-62; Francis Curtis, The Republican Party . .. 1854-1904 (2 volumes, 1904); H.J. Eckenrode, Rutherford B. Hayes (1930); C. G. Bowers, in Green Bag, June 1900; obituaries in Sun (New York), February 10, and Sunday Sentinel (Indianapolis), February 11, 1900. Other sources include family information supplied by Thompson's daughter, Mrs. D. W. Henry, of Terre Haute, Indiana correspondence with Indiana Historical Society; and a letter written by Thompson in 1894, published in the Culpeper Exponent, January 5, 1922, which deals with his ancestry and his early life in Virginia]

W.E.S-a.


THOMPSON, Smith (January 17, 1768-December 18, 1843), jurist. Although a bitter opponent of slavery, in 1842 he expressed his agreement with Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (16 Peters, 539), upholding the federal Fugitive Slave Act.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 471-472:

THOMPSON, SMITH (January 17, 1768-December 18, 1843), jurist, was born in the town of Amenia (Stanford), Dutchess County, New York, the son of Ezra and Rachel (Smith) Thompson. His father was a descendant of Anthony Thompson who arrived in Boston in 1637 and subsequently settled at Milford in the New Haven colony. Smith Thompson graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1788, and studied law in Poughkeepsie under James Kent [q.v.], supporting himself meanwhile by teaching school. He was admitted to the bar in 1792 and practised for a time in Troy, but returned to Poughkeepsie in 1793 when Kent went to New York City. In 1794 he married Sarah, daughter of Gilbert Livingston of Poughkeepsie, a member of the powerful Livingston family, and thereafter he was affiliated with the Jeffersonian Republicans of the anti-Burr faction in New York. He was elected to the state legislature in 1800 and represented Dutchess County in the constitutional convention of 1801. The same year he was appointed district attorney for the middle district but his appointment as associate justice of the supreme court of New York on January 8, 1802, prevented his serving. In 1807 the Council of Appointment offered him the mayoralty of New York City, but he declined it,. remaining on the bench. On February 25, 1814, he was. made chief justice in place of Kent, who became chancellor.

In November 1818 Thompson was appointed secretary of the navy by Monroe. He assumed his duties January 1, 1819, and served until August 31, 1823, when he resigned to accept appointment to the associate justiceship on the Supreme Court left vacant by the death of Henry Brockholst Livingston [q.v.], a position for which both Kent and Van Buren were strongly urged. Thompson debated accepting the appointment for some time because of his poor health, the low salary, and his lack of judicial experience in fields outside the common law, but mainly because he thought the Republicans might nominate him for the presidency in 1824. Finally convinced that he had no chance for the nomination against John Quincy Adams and William H. Crawford, he accepted the judicial appointment and remained on the Court until his death. His judicial duties did not quiet his political ambitions, however. In 1828 he allowed himself to be nominated for the governorship of New York by a badly divided National Republican party and ran against Martin Van Buren [q.v.] in one of the bitterest and most spectacular campaigns the state had seen. He was sharply criticized by his Jacksonian opponents for running for political office without resigning from the Court, and was defeated by a vote of 136,794 to 106,444.

On the Supreme Court Thompson joined the group which had already begun to pull away from the strong nationalism of Marshall. The death of his daughter prevented his taking his seat in February 1824 until after the arguments in Gibbons vs. Ogden (9 Wheaton, 1) had been heard, and he did not participate in the decision. Had he done so he would probably have disagreed with Marshall, since in 1812 he had rendered a decision in the New York court of errors upholding the power of the state to create the steamboat monopoly (Livingston vs. Van Ingen, 9 Johnson, 507, at p. 563); He dissented in Brown vs; Maryland (12 Wheaton, 419), in 1827, in which the Court held void a state license tax on imports in the original package, and in the same year he helped overrule Marshall in Ogden vs. Sa1mders (12 Wheaton, 214), writing a strong concurring opinion upholding the validity of a state bankruptcy law. He dissented in 1830 from Marshall's decision in Craig vs. Missouri (4 Peters, 410), holding certain state certificates void as bills of. credit; and wrote a concurring opinion in the later case (1837) of Briscoe vs. Bank of Kentucky (II Peters, 257), upholding the note issue of a state-owned bank. He concurred in a separate opinion in Mayor of New York vs, Miln (II Peters, 102), 1837, holding valid certain state regulations affecting foreign arid interstate commerce, and although personally a bitter opponent of slavery, in 1842 he expressed his agreement with Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (16 Peters, 539), upholding the federal Fugitive Slave Act. He dissented with Story in Charles River Bridge vs. Warren Bridge (12 Peters, 420), 1837, and also dissented in Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia (5 Peters, 1), 1831. The most notable case in which Thompson spoke for the Court was that of Kendall vs. United States (12 Peters, 524), 1838, upholding the right of the federal courts to require a cabinet officer by mandamus to perform a ministerial duty. Thompson's oral opinion in this case contained a paragraph vigorously rejecting the theory attributed to Jackson that the president under his power to see that the laws are faithfully executed may enforce his own interpretation of the Constitution by extending protection to his subordinates when they violate the acts of Congress or the mandates of the courts. This paragraph was expunged at the request of Attorney-General Benjamin F. Butler [q.v.], who denied that such a theory had been urged in argument. It is significant as a judicial repudiation of a theory of executive independence generally supposed to have been held by Jackson and Lincoln (see Warren, post, II, 317 ff.). Thompson wrote th e opinion of the Court in eighty-five cases, few of which related to constitutional matters. He wrote eleven dissenting opinions and five concurring opinions.

In 1836, after the death of his first wife, Thompson married her cousin Eliza, daughter of Henry Livingston. Two sons and two daughters were born of the first marriage and one son and two daughters, of the second. Egbert Thompson [q.v.] was his nephew. In 1813 he was made one of the regents of the University of the State of New York. He was a strong Presbyterian and a vice-president of the American Bible Society. He was small in stature, reserved in manner and speech, but kind and affable upon close acquaintance. He died in Poughkeepsie in his seventy-sixth year.

[Thompson's opinions in the Supreme Court appear in 9 Wheaton to 16 Peters, inclusive. Biographical material appears in Law Reporter, January 1844; A. B. Street, The Council of Revision of the State of New York (1859); Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History (1922), volume II, passim; H. L. Carson, Th e Supreme Court of the U.S. (1891); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume I (1906); Alden Chester, Courts and Lawyers of New York (1925);

W. B.


THOMSON, Edward (October 12, 1810-March 22, 1870), first president of Ohio Wesleyan University, editor, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Thomson was a strong anti-slavery man, and this fact together with his recognized literary abilities led to his selection in 1860 as editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal in New York, the chief Methodist organ in the United States. This important post he filled during the years of the Civil War.

(Edward Thomson, Jr., Life of Edward Thomson, D.D., LL.D. (1885); E. T. Nelson, Fifty Years of History of the Ohio Wesleyan University, 1844-1894 (1895); The Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery ... of the State of Ohio (n.d.), volume VI).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 482-483:

THOMSON, EDWARD (October 12, 1810-March 22, 1870), first president of Ohio Wesleyan University, editor, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Portsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, England, the fourth of thirteen children. His father, Benjamin Thomson, was a dry-goods merchant; his mother, Eliza Moore, a woman of education and attainments. In 1817, because of (financial reverses, the father sought a new business location, first going to southern France and thence to America (1818), finally settling in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, where he opened a drug store. Here young Thomson received his early education and manifested such an interest in books that he neglected play. In 1828 he entered Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and after a year's study passed the examinations which admitted him to medical practice. He opened an office at Jeromeville, Ohio, a small village near Wooster. While he was engaged in practice his interest in religion was awakened by the preaching of Russell Bigelow, an eloquent Methodist circuit rider, whom he heard at a camp-meeting, where he had been called to make a professional visit. This interest grew until in December 1831 he united with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the next year, July 1, was licensed to preach. In the fall of 1832 he was admitted on trial to the Ohio Conference and assigned as junior preacher on the Norwalk circuit.

His rise to a place of influence in the Methodist Episcopal Church was rapid. He served at Sandusky and Cincinnati, and at the latter place took a full course of lectures at the Cincinnati Medical College, from which he received the degree of M.D. In 1836 he was appointed to Detroit, and on July 4, 1837, married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Hon. Mordecai Bartley [q.v.]. In 1838 Thomson was appointed principal of Norwalk Seminary; and four years later was chosen president of Ohio Wesleyan University, then in process of establishment. From 1844 until he took up his duties as president in 1846 he edited the Ladies' Repository at Cincinnati. His presidency covered the formative years of the institution's life and at the time of his retirement in 1860 the college was well established, with four buildings and a student body of about five hundred.

Thomson was a strong anti-slavery man, and this fact together with his recognized literary abilities led to his selection in 1860 as editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal in New York, the chief Methodist organ in the United States. This important post he filled admirably during the years of the Civil War, conducting the paper on a high patriotic plane. He represented the North Ohio Conference in the General Conference from 1840 until in 1864 he was elected bishop. He was sent immediately to visit Methodist missions in the Orient, and later published a two-volume work entitled Our Oriental Missions (1870). His other published works include: Essays, Educational and Religious (1855, 1856, 1857); and Evidences of Revealed Religion (1872). He died at Wheeling, West Virginia, while on his way to preside over the Eastern conferences. His first wife died in 1863, and on May 9, 1866, he married Annie E. Howe, who with a son and daughter by his first wife and a son by the second survived him.

[Thomson's Our Oriental Missions contains biographical sketch; see also Edward Thomson, Jr., Life of Edward Thomson, D.D., LL.D. (1885); E. T. Nelson, Fifty Years of History of the Ohio Wesleyan University, 1844-1894 (1895); The Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery ... of the State of Ohio (n.d.), volume VI; T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton, Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio (1876); Christian Advocate (New York), April 7, 1870; Cincinnati Commercial, March 23, 1870; MSS. in library of Ohio Wesleyan University]

W.W.S.


THOMSON, Edward William (February 12, 1849-March 5, 1924), editor, author, poet. Before he was sixteen, influenced by his hatred of slavery and his admiration for the character of Abraham Lincoln, he left home to enlist in the Union army during the Civil War. He served in both the 3rd and the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the Virginia campaigns of 1864 and 1865.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 483:

THOMSON, EDWARD WILLIAM (February 12, 1849-March5, 1924), editor, author, poet, was born in Toronto, Canada. He was the son of William and Margaret Hamilton (Foley) Thomson, and a member of one of the Loyalist families which removed from the United States to Canada after the Revolution. He was educated in the public schools and at Trinity College School, Weston, Ontario. Before he was sixteen, influenced by his hatred of slavery and his boyish admiration for the character of Abraham Lincoln, he left home to enlist in the Union army during the Civil War. He served in both the 3rd and the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the Virginia campaigns of 1864 and 1865. On his return to Canada he enlisted in the Queen's Own Rifles, and saw service with them during the Fenian raids of 1866. For a number of years (1868--79) he was a civil engineer, and was employed in the construction of the Carillon Canal, around the rapids of the Ottawa River. He discovered, however, a taste for writing and a bent for journalism, and joined the staff of the Toronto Globe, one of the most influential of Canadian newspapers. He served the Globe as chief editorial writer from 1879 to 189r. In the latter year he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he was for twelve years one of the editors of the Youth's Companion. After leaving the Companion; he was Canadian correspondent of the Boston Evening Transcript, resident in Ottawa, but traveling much about the country in the preparation of his articles. During these years he practised independent journalism as well, contributing numerous articles to magazines and newspapers in the United States and Canada. Always a political liberal of the old school, he took a deep interest in Canadian politics. He was the friend of many public men of the Liberal party, and was especially intimate with Sir Wilfred Laurier, long the premier of the Dominion.

Thomson's first work in fiction was Old Man, C Savarin and Other Stories, published in 1895; this was followed by Walter Gibbs, the Young Boss (1896) and Smoky Days (1901). More important in a literary way were his contributions to poetry, which were limited in quantity but of no little excellence. They included Between Earth and Sky (1897) and The Many Mansioned House and Other Poems (1909), published in the United States and England as When Lincoln Died, and Other Poems (1909). His verses show considerable imaginative and emotional power. Those that deal with the Civil War reflect his early admiration for Lincoln, which only strengthened with the years; it was always a sentimental satisfaction to him that his birthday was the same as Lincoln's. He also made a metrical version of M. S. Henry's translation of the medieval French romance, Aucassin and Nicolette, delicately rendered in a verse form as nearly as possible that of the original poem (1896). He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom. He was married in March 1873 to Adelaide (d. 1921), daughter of Alexander St. Denis. He died in Boston, Massachusetts, survived by his only child, a son.

[Who's Who in America, 1918-19; W. S. Wallace, The Directory of Canadian Biography (1926); H. J. Morgan, The Canadian Men and Women of the Time (2nd ed., 1912); Archibald MacMurchy, Handbook of Canadian Literature (English) (1906); obituary in Boston Transcript, March 7, 1924; personal acquaintance, and private information.]

H. S. C-n.


THOREAU, Henry David, 1817-1862, poet, author of Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), reformer and anti-slavery activist.  Wrote antislavery poetry.  Gave lectures and wrote on slavery’s immorality.  Wrote anti-slavery essay, “Reform and the Reformers” and “Herald of Freedom.”  Advocate of passive resistance to civil government.  Active participant in Underground Railroad.  Supporter of radical abolitionist John Brown. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 100-101; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 491-497; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 45, 94, 120, 158, 183, 215, 241, 267; Glick, 1972; Gougeon, 1995; Harding, 1982; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 4, 215, 248, 263, 265, 266, 267, 321, 322, 342, 376; Richardson, 1986; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 476-477; Taylor, 1996; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 599). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 491-497:

THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (July 12, 1817-May 6, 1862), essayist, poet, transcendentalist, was born in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, of a varied ancestry which, on his mother's side, ran back to the Loyalist Jones family of Weston, Massachusetts, and to the Scotch Dunbars of New Hampshire. It was these Dunbars that Henry Thoreau most resembled, having a romantic imagination like that of his grandfather Asa Dunbar, a love of nature and an unconventionality like that of his mother, and an inventiveness and whimsical humor like that of his favorite uncle Charles Dunbar. On his father's side the family derived directly from the Isle of Jersey and remotely from the city of Tours, from which place-name the family name seems to have originated. Henry's father, John Thoreau, was a grandson of Philippe Thoreau of St. Helier, Jersey, and eldest son of John Thoreau, Jersey sailor and adventurer, who in 1772 settled in Boston and began a successful mercantile career, retiring in 1800 to Concord. There his son John, the father of the author, became storekeeper and pencil manufacturer and "remembered more about the worthies (and unworthies) of Concord village . . . than anyone else" (Thoreau's "Journal" for February 3, 1859, Writings, Walden ed., XVII, 437). John Thoreau on May II, 1812, married Cynthia Dunbar, a native of Keene, New Hampshire, and a woman of rare independence of spirit, vivacity, and with a deep love for the out-of-doors unusual at that time. Thoreau was born at the home of his maternal grandmother Mrs. Jonas Minott, widow of Asa Dunbar, on the Virginia Road northeast of the village, and, except for short periods in early childhood in Boston and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, resided in Concord during his entire life, enlarging the town in his imagination until it became a microcosm holding within its borders the phenomena of the world.

His mother and his uncle Charles Dunbar introduced him to the countryside when he was very young, and he took a normal boyish delight in hunting, fishing, and country sports. At college and later as tutor he longed for his native fields and wrote homesick letters about them. In company with his brother he became, after college, a naturalist without rod and gun. His early maturity was made notable by daily exploration of familiar haunts, where he contemplated nature with a wise passiveness that owed something to Wordsworth and something to the Oriental mystics, who were ever attractive to him. The ecstasy of pantheism characterized his journalizing about nature during his first fifteen years out of college. Later in life his nature observation, perhaps under the influence of his friends Louis Agassiz and Thaddeus W. Harris [qq.v.] and perhaps as a result of his own middle age, became more objective and scientific.  His interest in nature is too early and too nearly a passion to be treated lightly even in thinking of him as more than a naturalist.

He was named David Henry for his uncle David Thoreau who died in Concord in August 1817. After retaining the original order of names until his graduation from college, Thoreau reversed them, assigning no reason for the change. He prepared for college at Concord Academy and entered Harvard in August 1833. At college he submitted himself to the restricted curriculum of the day, entered little into the undergraduate life, went to chapel in a green coat "because the rules required black," and found solace in resorting to the alcove of the college library in which were the writings of the English poets, particularly those of the seventeenth century. In 1834 he began keeping a journal, a practice continued until the end of his life; and in 1835, between terms, he taught school at Canton, Massachusetts, and boarded at the home of Orestes A. Brownson [q.v.], who taught him to read German. During his college course he was granted a scholarship in the form of the income from a Chelsea (Mississippi) estate and with some difficulty collected the rents himself, as Emerson had done fifteen years earlier. Thoreau felt particularly the influence of two teachers: Edward T. Channing, who taught him to write English sentences, and Jones Very [q.v.], who taught him Greek and introduced him, to the poetry of the English mystics; He emerged from Harvard in August 1837 far from the top of his class but perhaps the best-read member of the group.

College having prepared him for no occupation, he turned school teacher and for a fortnight in September 1837 taught the town school of Concord, where he sought discipline through moral suasion much.as Bronson Alcott had done in Boston a few years before. A member of the school committee so objected to the absence of the ferule that the next day Thoreau, to make whipping absurd, whipped half a dozen surprised pupils and that night resigned his school. During the rest of that year he helped his father in what had become the family industry of pencil making. Early in 1838 he wrote to his brother John, then teaching in Staunton, Massachusetts, proposing that they migrate westward and try teaching in Kentucky. Later they decided to open a private school in their father's house, John in charge and Henry teaching Latin, Greek, French, and mathematics. The next year they moved the school to the old Academy building, and the brothers continued teaching until the spring of 1841, introducing "field trips" for nature instruction, an innovation in American education. John perhaps caught the imagination of more pupils, but Henry's nature lore and thoroughness remained long in the memories of those whom he taught.

It was while they were teaching, during the first half of September 1839, that the Thoreau brothers made their thirteen-day vacation voyage down the Concord River and up the Merrimack as far as Concord, New Hampshire, a pastoral Journey not memorable in itself, but immortalized by Henry in his first book. On April 11, 1838, Thoreau delivered the first of his almost annual lectures to the Concord Lyceum, the first one being on the subject of "Society." Later in the yeas, in December, he wrote his essay "Sound and Silence" and followed it in July 1840 with his rhapsody on courage, refused for the Dial by Margaret Fuller but printed in 1902 under the title The Service.

Early in 1841, in the full tide of success, the Thoreau brothers announced their school would close because of John's ill health. Henry went to live in the Emerson home, where during a two-year intimacy their long friendship began, a friendship cemented early by keen bereavements, Thoreau's brother dying on January 11, 1842, and Emerson's son Waldo sixteen days later. Their sorrow drew them together and the next few years marked the h eight of their friendship. It was about this time that Thoreau was disappointed in his brief love affair with Ellen Sewall, and his friendship for her brother Edmund was broken off when the boy went with his parents to live in Scituate, Massachusetts. Years later Thoreau put into the first chapter of his Walden a reference to his loss of "a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove"; Edmund Sewall, John Thoreau, and Ellen Sewall. But the residence in th e Emerson home brought gains also, for Thoreau began meeting with the group now known as the Transcendental Club and became acquainted with F. H. Hedge, A. Bronson Alcott, James Freeman Clarke, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller; and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody [qq.v.]. In the Emerson household he turned his facile hand to all things from gardening and fence-mending to writing essays and poems, and during Emerson's absence edited the April 1843 number of the Dial. In May 1843 he became tutor in the home of his Concord patron's brother, William Emerson. The year on Staten Island constituted Thoreau's longest residence outside of Concord. He published "A Walk to Wachusett," a record of a July 1842 expedition, in the Boston Miscellany (January 1843) and while tutoring he translated "The Seven Against Thebes" but did not seek to publish it. In New York he made his acquaintance with the sea and with William Henry Channing, Lucretia Mott, Henry James, Sr., and Horace Greeley [qq.v.], and sought out publishers in a generally unsuccessful effort to sell articles to the magazines.

As early as December 24, 1841, Thoreau, in his journal, had expressed a desire to "go soon and live away by the pond." It is not surprising, therefore, to find him upon his return to Concord early in 1844 again turning his thoughts toward this project. His friend Stearns Wheeler had lived in a hut at nearby Sandy Pond in 1841- 42 and Thoreau had visited him and lived there perhaps as long as six weeks at one time; moreover, Ellery Channing had written to him on March 5, 1845: "I see nothing for you in this earth but that field which I once christened 'Briars'; go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you .... Concord is just as good a place as any other" (Writings, Walden ed., VI, 121). Thoreau had some private business to transact, chiefly the writing of his book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; in the same month in which Channing had told him to build a hut he began a small house on Emerson's land on the northwest shore of Walden Pond. As Henry S. Salt has said: "Walden was, in fact, to Thoreau what Brook Farm was to others of the transcendentalists-a retreat suitable for philosophic meditation, and the practice of a simpler, hardier, and healthier life" (Life of Thoreau, 1896, p. 65).

Thoreau took up residence at the Pond July 4, 1845, and remained there until September 6, 1847. During the summer of 1845 he was arrested for non-payment of poll tax, as Alcott had been in 1843. Both were protesting against slavery as it became a political issue in the Mexican War, and both chose "civil disobedience" as the most effective form of protest. Thoreau spent but one night in jail, the tax, much to his disgust, being paid by one of his aunts. Thoreau told the story of his jailing in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government" (later called "Civil Disobedience" and "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience") in Elizabeth Peabody's short-lived periodical Esthetic Papers (1849), and retold it at the close of the chapter "The Village" in Walden. It may well be that the jailing episode, bringing into high relief Thoreau's extension of Jefferson's definition of good government to its ultimate conclusion-anarchy as far as any existing government was concerned-is the most significant incident of his twenty-six months at Walden Pond, for much of the life there has been misunderstood and exaggerated. Viewed as an experiment, these years with their dependence upon the home pantry and the Emerson dinner table become meaningful. Thoreau tried his theories, he gained two years of youthful leisure, he wrote a book, he declared himself on the matter of an individual's duties to his government, and he returned to the village mature and certain of himself. He did not, in spite of his own satisfaction with the experiment, urge his scheme on others as the ideal way of life. He had, however, settled one matter so thoroughly to his satisfaction that he was willing ever after to preach the doctrine of simplification without specifying that the simplifying should be in the Walden mode or in any particular mode except one which each individual should fit to his own life.

On September 6, 1847, Thoreau moved back to his father's house in the village. He brought with him the first draft of his book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a series of comments upon life and literature gleaned from his journals of ten years and strung on the thread of narrative telling the story of the boat trip of the two brothers in September eight years before. He brought back new journals to be reaped in the preparation of  Walden six years later. "He was a student when he came to Walden; when he returned to Concord he was a teacher" (Salt, Life, 1896, p. 84). He began, in the early autumn of 1847, his second residence in the home of Emerson, where he lived for a year while Emerson was in Europe. The Week had found no publisher, though Emerson had, on August 6, 1847, solicited the aid of W. H. Furness in getting it published in Philadelphia, saying that "Thoreau is mainly bent on having it printed in a cheap form for a large circulation" (H. H. Furness, ed., Records of a Lifelong Friendship, Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Henry Furness, 19ro, p. 61). Thoreau, after adding to the book (the section on friendship, according to Alcott's diary, having been written as late as January 1848), finally published his first book at his own risk in the spring of 1849. Slightly over 200 copies were sold, and in 1853 three-quarters of the original thousand copies came back to the author. He salved his wounded spirit by commenting on the lack of sale, "It affects my privacy less, and leaves me freer" ("Journal," October 28, 1853, Writings, XI, 460). The s ix years between the return from Walden Pond and th e receipt of the unsold books had also contributed to Thoreau's freedom. Early in 1849 he returned to his father's "yellow house reformed" on Main Street and lived there during the remainder of his life.

One will not well understand Thoreau unless he places him in the midst of the Thoreau family, for that family life was as delightful and as intimate as that of their neighbors the Alcotts. None of the Thoreau children married or left home. Mrs. Thoreau shared with Mrs. Alcott the rare ability to create a rich home life out of simple materials. The family business of pencil making was a home industry, practised in a lean to of the house, participated in by all, and managed after the father's death February 3, 1859, by Sophia and Henry and made more profitable by the latter's inventiveness. Henry made himself useful in many other ways and became the "handy man" of Concord but was more dependent upon the esprit de corps of home life than the family was dependent upon him, more dependent than he or his first biographer, Emerson, would willingly admit. He was happy only when he was fulfilling his early wish expressed in a letter from Staten Island to his mother in 1843: "Methinks I should be content to sit at the back door in Concord, under the poplar tree, henceforth forever" (Writings, VI, 99).

Between the publication of the Week (1849) and that of Walden, or Life in th e Woods (1854) Thoreau's friendships multiplied and the poet Ellery Channing replaced Emerson in the center of his acquaintance. In 1849 he came to know Harrison G. 0. Blake of Worcester, Massachusetts, with whom he maintained a long correspondence and to whom his sister bequeathed his manuscripts and journals. He toured Cape Cod on foot late in 1849, spent a week in Canada in 1850, went in 1853 on his second journey into Maine. Four of his posthumous books derive in part at least from these expeditions: Excursions (1863), The Maine Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1865), and A Yankee in Canada (1866). In the midst of these happy journeyings he made one sad trip as emissary from Concord to Fire Island beach near New York, where July 19, 1850, Margaret Fuller Ossoli with her husband and son had been drowned in a shipwreck-a melancholy rummaging among the flotsam on the beach.

For five years after the return from the pond Thoreau lived ecstatically. He found keen delight in his daily walks about Concord and in the rarer, more ambitious trips into farther fields. It is the period of his friendship with the Emerson children, the berrying parties, the period of the formation of friendships, the years when one book was on the market (a drug there, to be sure) and when the next was in process of composition. He thought of himself as a poet and late in the period feared that his observation "is from year to year becoming more distinct and scientific" ("Journal," August 19, 1851, Writings, VIII, 406). One turns from these five free years to 1852, the year which has been called "the noon of his life" (Odell Shepard, ed., The Heart of Thoreau's Journals, 1927, p. rn6), when his most fruitful journalizing was done. He became interested in more individuals while his opinions of society became steadily more critical. He discovered a kindred youthful spirit in Emerson's seventy-seven year old aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, and a lively companion in Ellery Channing. He had become involved in the slavery question a second time on October 1, 1851, when he put a fugitive slave on the train for Canada. His growing distrust of society would seem to coincide with his increasing interest in a slavery issue that was rapidly reaching a crisis and in an industrialism that had begun in New England to reproduce the evils of the factory system of old England. The problem of labor is generously discussed in the 1853 journal in entries which were brought together in the posthumously published "Life Without Principle" (Atlantic Monthly, October 1863). Though he was suspicious of reformers, Thoreau's excitement over slavery grew to white heat during the notorious Anthony Burns extradition in 1854, while he filled his journal with a denunciation of government which later in the year he delivered as a speech, "Slavery in Massachusetts," at an anti-slavery rally in neighboring Framingham (Writings, IV, 387-408). These concerns of 1853 have a place in his book Walden, finished during that year and published August 9, 1854.

Walden confused the critics, for the book exhibited many of the paradoxes of its author. Seemingly parochial in its comments on the social condition of Concord, it has universal social criticism in it. With a reputation for being harmless natural history, it strikes blows at all the superficialities of society and government. Those qualities are also the qualities of Thoreau, who was at once as harmless and as devastating as the book, and as disarming to the commentators and critics.

After the publication of Walden Thoreau's life is anticlimactic. He became the scientific observer rather than the nature poet, working indefatigably upon his Concord herbarium, his weather records, and his ethnological study of the Indian. He became a lyceum lecturer with indifferent success outside of Concord. He began to finish life, making a last trip to Cape Cod in 1855, a last journey to Maine in 1857. Ill health in the form of tuberculosis began to close in upon him. In October 1854 he became acquainted with his one foreign friend, the donor of his extensive Oriental library, Thomas Cholmondeley. At Christmas 1854 he made his first visit to his Quaker correspondent Daniel Ricketson [q.v.] of New Bedford, and formed a lasting friendship which was recorded by the latter's children, Anna and Walton, in Daniel Ricketson and His Friends (1902). The third of the new friends was John Brown of Osawatomie [q.v.], whom he met in the home of Emerson in March 1857. To these new friends, Emerson added two names of late acquaintances who made a profound impression on Thoreau: Joe Polis, his Indian guide in Maine, and Walt Whitman, whom he met in New York in November 1856.

Thoreau's life burned out in a great enthusiasm, a defense of John Brown, who had been arrested at Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859. Thoreau was the first American to make public utterance in defense of Brown. He spoke in Concord Vestry on Sunday night, October 30, against the protests of his townsmen, having to ring the bell with his own hands and to open the door with the key which the fearful vestrymen had dared neither to give nor refuse him and so had left it where he could find it. In "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (Writings, IV, 409-40; first printed in James Redpath, Echoes of Harper's Ferry, 1860), Thoreau rose to new heights of incisiveness in avowing his approval of Brown's action, and eulogized the man so magnificently that he was heard, as Emerson wrote, "by all respectfully, and by many with a sympathy that surprised themselves" (Atlantic Monthly, August 1862, p. 242). On November 1 he read the same lecture in Boston, and the Liberator (November 4, 1859) commented on his enthusiasm. He spoke again a month later at the Concord service in commemoration of Brown's death. Thoreau regarded the John Brown affair as a touchstone which brought out the true nature of the American government. It became also the touchstone of his own nature, for his misanthropic reputation sloughed off when he rose to defend a martyr, and his antisocial position among his neighbors gave way to a respect among many for one in the van of social justice.

In December 1860 he caught cold which led to a bronchial infection aggravated by his insistence on keeping a lecture engagement. After that, tuberculosis made rapid progress. In the spring of 1861 he made a fruitless journey, accompanied by Horace Mann, Jr., to Minnesota in search of health. He observed in semi-invalid fashion the vast new region of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and went 300 miles beyond St. Paul to witness a gathering of the Sioux at Redwood. But the zest was gone. He returned to Concord weaker than when he had left, made one brief visit to New Bedford in August 1861, and then went to his room. The months of illness became so normal to him that he said he enjoyed the experiences of the sickroom as he had previously enjoyed those of the world of nature. He feverishly edited manuscripts which he left for his sister Sophia to publish. He weakened until the effort of holding the pages was too great for him; and then, at nine in the morning of May 6, 1862, he uttered the words of his beloved wilderness, "moose" and "Indian," and died. His funeral was held May 8, 1862, from the first parish church with a eulogy by Emerson (printed in enlarged form in the Atlantic Monthly, August 1862, and as a preface to Thoreau's Excursions in 1863) and with burial in the New Burying Ground in Concord. Some years later the body was moved to a new family lot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, on the ridge near the places where his friends Hawthorne, Emerson, Alcott, and Channing were to be buried.

Thoreau published but two books and a few magazine articles during his lifetime. From the huge mass of manuscript left at his death his sister published the volumes already mentioned. In 1865 Emerson presented a stoical Thoreau in his editing of Letters to Various Persons, enlarged in 1894 as Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau. His friend H. G. O. Blake edited selections from the journal as Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881), Summer (1884), Winter (1888), Autumn (1892). His poems, edited by H. S. Salt and F. B. Sanborn, were publish ed as Poems of Nature (1895). The Riverside edition of his works (II volumes, 1894) was superseded by the Walden edition of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (20 volumes, 1906), fourteen volumes of which contain virtually all of the extant journal with the exception of two years between April 1843 and July 1845 and a few unimportant nature records. In 1902 his early essay on bravery was published under the title of The Service; and in 1905 the Bibliophile Society published his 1843 essay Sir Walter Raleigh and a two-volume record of his travels called First and Last Journeys of Thoreau. The same society published an enlarged and garbled Walden (1909) containing 12,000 rejected words not included in the original edition and badly edited by F. B. Sanborn. There. have been some slight additions to the Thoreau canon since 1909, but nothing of great consequence except possibly the themes he wrote in college which, with changes, were included in Sanborn's biography of 1917. Some manuscript, including his notes for a history of the American Indian, remains unpublished, but it does not contain any considerable addition to Thoreau literature.  

Thoreau's powerful influence upon later literature, both English and American, is more due to his style than even his admirers have realized. It is a nervous style, usually staccato, though often expanding in poetic passages of complex rhythm, the style of an exhorter who does not " pull his punches," and directly in the tradition of the most characteristic American writing, journalistic and otherwise. It has the pith and force of a man who, more concerned with incisive thought than with sustained argument, care more for his sentences than for his essays as a whole. Even his descriptions depend more upon a single vivid image than upon a continuity of phrase. At his finest he is one of the best writers, if not the best, of American prose, but just as he wrote often from notes of uneven pitch, so he must be read in excerpts in order to be most impressive.

Of his books, only Walden is really organized; the rest are either journals padded with reflections or left as lean and specific narrative, or fragmentary essays made from crystallizations of his thought. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which has usually shared the reputation of Walden; is memorable now chiefly for the nature studies which were to give him his first eminence in literature. The Maine Woods is the same kind of book minus both the literary criticism of the Week and the social purpose of Walden. His observations of nature, which were lifelong, are characterized, not so much by their accuracy; in which others have exceeded him, as by a characteristic tension that gives them at their best an almost unequaled force and is felt in his style. Thoreau was teetering always between the transcendental and the scientific view of nature. From the first came his deep perceptions of spirit manifest in form which gives to simple, almost trivial, observations upon a flower, a cloud, a tree, a bird, a significant and often a passionate expression. To the latter is due the careful thoroughness of his study, as of one who looks and looks again at the same thing. If he saw sometimes too much with the inner eye, the accuracy of his words never fails. As he grew old er the transcendental seems to have been overborne in him by the very mass of his observations collected in his tireless rambles, until in his later journals the poet is almost lost in the sense of duty of a routine naturalist. Curiously enough, although he is supposed to be the fountain head of American nature writing, Thoreau actually stands apart from the American tradition in that he was unsentimental, and unromantic except in the expansiveness of his transcendentalism. He had a pass ion for nature which became articulate, and this is very American, but the Concord swamps and fields and the Maine woods were never merely picturesque to him, or sentimentally "wild" and emotionalized in that vein, as with Audubon, Burroughs, Muir, and with the nature fakers.

Walden, though uneven, is his one real book, and for that reason his greatest achievement, although most of its chapters can be duplicated, and some of them excelled, in his other writings. But it was not the nature writing of Walden which made it a textbook of the British Labor party, and read throughout the world. Thoreau's sojourn at Walden Pond was an experiment. He bought lime in the village to plaster the cabin he built there, but before he used it gathered a bushel of clamshells on the shores of nearby Fair Haven Bay and burnt them to a double handful of lime. His bean and potato planting, his baking in the ashes, his hunting and fishing, were likewise experiments, all intended to prove that certain transcendental doctrines of simplicity could be practised if need be, and, even more important, that a civilized man could make himself independent of the commercialism and the industrialism of New England. Thoreau has often been called anarchistic or anti-social. It would be more accurate to describe him as one who, urging conscience above government and being determined to rely upon himself before relying upon others, proposed to obey a set of laws which he regarded as more fundamental than those enforced by his particular state. Some of these he deduced from the tested experience of the ages some were local to his own prejudices. Inevitably this brought him into conflict with both the ideals and the practice of his neighbors. The greed of many, the low and unsatisfactory nature of the values that nearly all sought in experience, inspired an attack which was nothing new in philosophy but which gained freshness and force when made by a man who found his greatest happiness in walking over the land they bought and sold. His perception of the lacks and dangers of the recent industrialism of New England was, however, both new and cogent. Like Carlyle, he saw politics as economics and current economics as spiritual diminution. But he was concrete where Carlyle was cloudy, specific where Carlyle was rhetorical, and a cool-headed Yankee where Carlyle lost his poise in universals and in the admiration of the dubiously great. Size never impressed Thoreau. A Yankee again, he argued for the practicality of the supposedly impractical. Only the grosser wrongs, like slavery, or an occasional esotericism from the Orient, drove him toward rhetoric. Thus Walden is a complete report of an experiment in thinking and living, with the definite design of arguing for true values against false and with abundant illustrations drawn from nature of the true; it is an attempt to demonstrate that civilized man can escape the evils of competition, and to show that a nature lover has his own passions worth describing for a world delivered over unto artifice. Its extraordinary influence is clue to this organic purpose, excellently expressed, and to its highly important themes, of which, ironically, that furthest from his philosophic purpose though nearest to his heart, joy in nature, gave the book its position as a classic for youth.

The philosophy of his famous essay on civil disobedience is all implicit in the later Walden. This is the classic of individualism in its inevitable conflict with government, but, again, implies a state based upon laws in conformity with Thoreau's conception of what is noblest and most worthily human. It is a mistake, however, to define Thoreau as a social philosopher. He was, essentially, a man of letters, an essayist in the best sense, with a touch of the prophet. He was not a reformer, for he distrusted group action, but rather belongs with Walt Whitman as one who, having put his own definition upon morality, exhorted to the moral life. Both men are at the heart of the persistent American tradition of perfectibility, although Thoreau is on the pessimistic, Whitman on the optimistic side.

Thoreau was not a scientist in any true sense (though a good naturalist), not an important philosopher, but an admirable critic of everything except literature, where, in spite of some fine sayings, he was limited by the narrow range of his emotions. It was his own literary skill, however, that made him the best interpreter of the American environment of woods, swamps, meadows, fauna and flora, and weather, to the domesticated Europeans who were his fellow Americans. It was to know the soil, as the English know theirs, that he waded marshes and sought the wisdom of the Indians in the Maine woods. He would seem to be assured of permanence in English 1iterature, partly for his style, though certainly not for any power over form beyond the sentence or, rarely, the paragraph, but still more as a germinal influence completely articulate for ideas which keep recurring in every culture and always search out their best translator into words. He is one of those writers whose particular job is to relate the best of man to the possibilities of his environment. And here he is a landmark in the vital thread of American literature-the conflict between ideals of living and methods of making a living. The environment he described was conditioned by Concord; but few writers in English have been so often clear, lofty, eloquent within such narrow limits of experience. It was a natural, though not inevitable, contribution of rural New England to world literature.

[F. H. Allen, A Bibliography of Henry David Thoreau (1908), is definitive up to that year; it may be supplemented by the bibliography in The Cambridge History of American Literature, volume II (1918), and R. W. Adams, A Thoreau Checklist, 1908-1930 (1930). There are numerous full-length biographies. W. E. Channing, Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist (1873; new ed. 1902), gives a personal appraisal. F. B. Sanborn, Henry D. Thoreau (1882), enlarged into The Life of Henry David Thoreau (1917), is rich in family history and Concord lore but opinionated. Henry S. Salt, The Life of Henry David Thoreau (1890), revised as Life of Henry David Thoreau (1896), remains the most accurate and complete biography, not superseded by Leon Bazalgette, Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature (1924), J.B. Atkinson, Henry Thoreau, the Cosmic Yankee (1917), and Mark Van Doren, Henry David Thoreau; a Critical Study (1916). F. B. Sanborn, The Personality of Thoreau (1901), and Edward Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend (1917), are particularly valuable studies which emphasize the kindly humanness of their subject. Thoreau has been the subject of a myriad of shorter studies among which, outside the histories of American literature, the reader will find the following valuable: Norman Foerster, "Thoreau," in Nature in American Literature (1923); J. R. Lowell, "Thoreau" in My Study Windows (1871); H. S. Canby, "Henry David Thoreau," in Classic Americans (1931), a study of Thoreau's social thinking.]

R.W.A.
H.S.C.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 100-101:

THOREAU, Henry David, author, born in Concord, Massachusetts, 12 July, 1817; died there, 6 May, 1862. His grandfather, John Thoreau, came from St. Helier, a parish in the island of Jersey, about 1773, and moved from Boston to Concord in 1800. Henry, the third of four children, went to school in Boston for a little more than a year, then attended the schools in Concord, fitted for college at a private school, entered Harvard in 1833, and was graduated in 1837, a fair scholar but not eminent. The family being in humble circumstances, the father was assisted in paying his small expenses by the boy's aunts, his elder sister, who was then teaching, the beneficiary fund of the college, and Henry's own exertions at school-keeping. Thoreau afterward led a literary life, writing, lecturing, reading, and meeting his modest physical needs by surveying, pencil-making, engineering, and carpentering. He was never married, and never left Concord except for a lecturing-tour, or a pedestrian excursion. Cities he disliked; civilization he did not believe in. Nature was his passion, and the wilder it was the more he loved it. He was a fine scholar, especially in Greek, translated two of the tragedies of Æschylus, was intimate with the Greek anthology, and knew Pindar, Simonides, and all the great lyric poets. In English poetry he preferred Milton to Shakespeare, and was more familiar with the writers of the 17th century than with modern men. He was no mean poet himself; in fact, he possessed the essential quality of the poet—a soaring imagination. He possessed an eye and an ear for beauty, and had he been gifted with the power of musical expression, would have been distinguished. No complete collection of his pieces has ever been made or could be, but fragments are exquisite. Emerson said that his poem on “Smoke” surpassed any by Simonides. That Thoreau was a man of aspiration, a pure idealist, reverent, spiritual, is plain from his intimacy with Bronson Alcot and Emerson, the latter of whom spoke these words at his funeral: “His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.” His religion was that of the transcendentalists. The element of negation in it was large, and in his case conspicuous and acrid. Horace Greeley found fault with his “defiant pantheism,” and an editor struck out the following passage from a contribution: “It [the pine-tree] is as immortal as I am, and, perchance, will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.” His doctrine was that of individualism. Therein he differed from Emerson, who was sympathetic and began at the divine end. Thoreau began with the ground and reasoned up. He saw beauty in ashes, and “never chanced to meet with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive, as the stillness and solitude of the Well-meadow field.” He aimed at becoming elemental and spontaneous. He wrote hymns to the night quite in the pagan fashion. His very aptitudes brought him in contact with the earth. His aspect suggested a faun, one who was in the secret of the wilderness. Mr. Sanborn, his friend and biographer, thus describes him: “He is a little under size, with a huge Emersonian nose, bluish gray eyes, brown hair, and a ruddy weather-beaten face, which reminds one of some shrewd and honest animal's—some retired philosophical woodchuck or magnanimous fox.” Another friend mentions his sloping shoulders, his long arms, his large hands and feet. “I fancy,” he wrote, “the saying that man was created a little lower than the angels should have been a little lower than the animals.” He built a hut on the shore of Walden pond in 1845, and lived there, with occasional absences, about two years and a half. He built on Emerson's land, though he had wished to build elsewhere. The house had no lock to the door, no curtain to the window. It belonged to nature as much as to man, and to all men as much as to any one. When Thoreau left it, it was bought by a Scotch gardener, who carried it off a little way and used it as a cottage. Then a farmer bought it, moved it still farther away, and converted it into a tool-house. A pile of stones marks the site of Thoreau's hut. He went into the woods, not because he wished to avoid his fellow-men, as a misanthrope, but because he wanted to confront Nature, to deal with her at first hand, to lead his own life, to meet primitive conditions; and having done this, he abandoned the enterprise, recommending no one to try it who had not “a pretty good supply of internal sunshine. . . . To live alone comfortably, he must have that self-comfort which rays out of Nature—a portion of it at least.” At Walden he labored, studied, meditated, edited his first book, the “Week,” and gauged his genius. He redeemed and consecrated the spot. The refusal to pay taxes, and his consequent imprisonment, were due to a more specific cause— namely, his dissent from the theory of human government and from the practice of the American state, which supported slavery. He stood simply and plainly on the rights and duty of the individual. The act was heroic as he performed it, and, when read by the light of his philosophy, was consistent. Thoreau was anything but sour, surly, or morose. He could sing, and even dance, on occasion.  He was sweet with children; fond of kittens; a sunbeam at home; the best of brothers, gentle, patient, helpful. Those he loved he gave his heart to, and if they were few it was perhaps because his affections were not as expansive as they were deep. But he showed little emotion, having learned, like the Indian, to control his feelings. He cultivated stoicism. He had the pride as well as the conceit of egotism, and while the latter gave most offence to those who did not know him well, the former was the real cause of his conduct. Thoreau had no zeal of authorship, yet he wrote a great deal, and left a mass of manuscripts, mostly in prose, for he produced very few verses after he was thirty years old. The “Dial,” the “Democratic Review,” “Graham's Magazine,” “The Union Magazine,” “Putnam's Magazine,” the “Atlantic Monthly,” the “Tribune,” all contained contributions from him. Every volume of the “Dial” had something; the third volume many articles. The essay on “Resistance to Civil Government” was printed in “Æsthetic Papers.” Only two of the seven volumes of his printed works appeared in his lifetime—“A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers” (Boston, 1849) and “Walden, or Life in the Woods” (1854). The others are “Excursions in Field and Forest,” with a memoir by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1863); “The Maine Woods” (1864); “Cape Cod” (1865); “Letters to Various Persons,” with nine poems (1865); and “A Yankee in Canada,'” with anti-slavery and reform papers (1866). His life has been written by William Ellery Channing under the title “The Poet-Naturalist” (1873), and by Franklin B. Sanborn in the “American Men of Letters” series (1882). The former is a rhapsody rather than a biography, and is largely composed of extracts from Thoreau's journals, which had never seen the light before. It also contains a full list of his publications. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 100-101.


THORNTON, Jessy Quinn, 1810-1888, jurist, lawyer.  Chief Justice of the Oregon Provisional Government, 1847.  Supporter of “Wilmot Proviso” to prohibit extension of slavery in the new territories acquired after war with Mexico. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 700; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 502-503; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 607 H. H. Bancroft, History of Oregon, volume I (1886); H. W. Scott, History of the Oregon Country (6 volumes, 1924); C. H. Carey, History of Oregon (1922). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 502-503:

THORNTON, JESSY QUINN (August 24, 1810-February 5, 1888), Oregon pioneer, was born near Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia), a descendant of an English immigrant who came to Virginia in 1633. His parents moved to Champaign County, Ohio, when he was an infant. He received a good education. Choosing the law for a profession, he spent nearly three years in London as a student, and on his return continued his preparation in the office of John H. Peyton of Staunton, Virginia. After his admission to the bar in 1833 he attended law lectures at the University of Virginia. In 1835 he opened a law office in Palmyra, Missouri, and in the following year edited a newspaper in that town. On February 8, 1838, at Hannibal, Missouri, he married Mrs. Nancy M. Logue, and three years later moved to Quincy, Illinois. Their health failing, in 1846 he and his wife set out for Oregon, overtaking on the way the California-bound ox-train of Colonel William Henry Russell [q.v.] and arriving in the Salem neighborhood in November.

Thornton at once came into public notice, and on February 9, 1847, Governor George Abernethy [q.v.] appointed him judge of the supreme court of the provisional government. In October he was delegated to proceed at once to the national capital and press the demand of the people for the organization of a territory. Making the trip by water, he arrived in Washington in May 1848, and was soon joined by Joseph L. Meek [q.v.], who, with similar instructions, had traveled by land. With the support of President Polk, Thornton worked tirelessly against a hostile, or indifferent, majority in Congress, and was successful in obtaining the passage of an act establishing the territorial government of Oregon on August 14, the last day of the session. A disagreement with the President lost for him, however, a reappointment as judge. While in Washington he wrote Oregon and California in 1848, which was published early the following year, in two volumes, in New York; a second edition appeared in 1855. Returning to Oregon, he was appointed Indian sub-agent for the region north of the Columbia, but soon gave up the post. He then resumed the practice of law and became active in politics. In 1864-65 he represented Benton County in the legislature. For some years he lived in Oregon City, later in Albany and Portland, and from 1871 in Salem. His later years were spent in poverty. He died in Salem, and was buried there in the Methodist churchyard. He was survived by his wife.

Thornton was one of the leading figures in early Oregon, and his work was important and useful. Into the act establishing the territory he succeeded in incorporating a provision doubling the amount of land ordinarily set aside for school purposes, and thus made possible the rapid expansion of educational facilities in the young community. He was a voluminous writer. For the meeting of the Oregon Pioneer Association of 1874 he expanded the sketch of the provisional government given in his book, and for the meeting of 1878 he prepared an account of the emigration of 1846. Both articles are printed in Transactions of the Association. He was also the author of a series of political articles in the New York Tribune under the pen-name of Achilles de Harley, and he wrote many letters for the local press. Much of his writing is bitterly critical of some of his contemporaries, and though late in life he made partial amends for this censoriousness, he set in motion controversies that continued long after his death.

[H. H. Bancroft, History of Oregon, volume I (1886); H. W. Scott, History of the Oregon Country (6 volumes, 1924); C. H. Carey, History of Oregon (1922); Portland Morning Oregonian, February 7, 1888; information from J. Neilson Barry, Portland, Oregon.]

W. J. G.  


THORNTON, William, 1761-1828, from West Indian island of Tortola, helped found American Colonization Society, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, early advocate of Black colonization; a former slave holder, he returned his slaves to Africa.

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, p. 9; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 123-124; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 504-507; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 609; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 5-8, 7-13, 66, 91). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 504-507:

THORNTON, WILLIAM (May 20, 1759-March 28, 1828), architect, inventor, and public official, was born on the little island of Jost van Dyke in the community of the Society of Friends centering at Tortola in the Virgin Islands. His father is believed to have been also named William; his mother was Dorcas Downing Zeageus (or Zeagurs). He was sent to England at the age of five, and from 1781 to 1784 attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine; his degree of M.D., however, he received from Aberdeen University on November 23, 1784 (diploma in Thornton Papers, Library of Congress). After a period in Paris he returned to Tortola (1786) and then came to the United States, being in New York in 1787, and becoming an American citizen in Delaware, January 7, 1788. He soon made Philadelphia his headquarters. He did not practise medicine, and seems to have had some small means and to have been well received. In 1789 he achieved his first public distinction. The Library Company of Philadelphia offered as a prize a share in the Company for the best design for its new building on Fifth Street. Thornton writes in an autobiographic fragment, "When I travelled I never thought of architecture. But I got some books and worked a few days, then gave a plan in the ancient Ionic order, which carried the day." The building, one of the finest in the country in its time, stood until 1880. From 1778, if not earlier, to 1790 Thornton was associated with John Fitch [q.v.] in his experiments with steamboats operated by paddles. Fitch had demonstrated his first boat on the Delaware in 1787; his second, in which Thornton had a share, made a trip of twenty miles in 1788. For his third, the Thornton, it would appear that Thornton advanced much of the cost and made fruitful suggestions. It made a speed of eight miles an hour, and is said to have been run regularly on the Delaware as a packet boat and to have covered some thousand miles before it was retired in the winter of 1790. After Fulton's success Thornton published in 1814 his Short Account of the Origin of Steam Boats, vindicating Fitch's and his own contributions.

On October 13,1790, Thornton married Anna Maria Brodeau, then sixteen years of age, and took her to Tortola for two years. While there he learned of the competition for the public buildings in the new federal city of Washington, and wrote the commissioners in July that he would bring his plans to the United States. Delayed by illness, he arrived at the beginning of November, to find that no decision had yet been reached as to the design of the Capitol. Of those first received that of Etienne Sulpice Hallet [q.v.], a French professional, had been most favored, and he had been retained to prepare further studies, while certain other competitors were invited to revise their designs according to new data. It was obvious at once to Thornton that the design brought with him from the West Indies (the drawings are preserved by the Library of Congress and the American Institute of Architects) would not be acceptable, and he undertook a new one. In its preparation he was much influenced by a glimpse of one of Hallet's designs submitted the previous October. The new design was still unfinished on January 31 when it was recommended by President Washington in terms which assured its adoption. This followed early in March. Thornton received as premium a lot in the new city (No. 15 in Square 634) and five hundred dollars. The drawings of this design appear to have been destroyed by Thornton at a later period, but from the manuscript description which accompanied them, and other evidence, it is possible to reconstruct its essential provisions.

Since Thornton was not an architect by profession, nor a builder, there was no idea of employing him to supervise the erection. of the Capitol, and Hallet was retained for the task. He and the contractors in Washington at once raised numerous structural and practical objections to the design, some of which, aimed at defects and inconsistencies arising from Thornton's lack of experience, appear to have been justified. At a conference with the President and with Jefferson, the secretary of state, held in July 1793, a revised plan prepared by Hallet-"considered," Jefferson wrote (Documentary  History of the ... United States Capitol, post, pp. 26-27), "as Dr. Thornton's plan rendered into practicable form" was adopted, subject to certain modifications left for future decision. The foundations were begun in accordance with this plan, but in the modifications undertaken differences of opinion arose which resulted in Hallet's dismissal, June 28, 1794. James Hoban [q.v. ], architect of the President's House, remained in charge of the erection of the Capitol. On September 12, 1794, Thornton was appointed one of the commissioners of the city, and shortly removed his residence there from Philadelphia. He considered that he had a mandate to restore the form of the Capitol to conformity with his designs. The progress made rendered this not entirely practicable, and he prepared revised designs determined, in considerable measure, by the work already performed, but returning to some of the principal features of his design which had been abandoned. A complete reconciliation of the two designs was not feasible, and many problems regarding the central portion of the structure remained unsolved. A further confusion had been threatened by the proposition of George Hadfield [q.v.], who was appointed superintendent in 1795, to substitute an attic for Thornton's basement, but Thornton was successful in constraining Hadfield to follow his directions. The north wing had been constructed in accordance with Thornton's ideas by the time Congress removed to Washington in 1800, and the exterior of the south wing, constructed later, necessarily conformed with it. Thornton's idea of a great central rotunda was also adhered to by later architects of the building. In May 1802 the board of commissioners of the city was abolished by Congress, and Thornton had henceforth no official connection with the work on the Capitol. This, however, did not prevent him from continuing to concern himself with it. The elder Benjamin Henry Latrobe [q.v.], whom Jefferson appointed in 1803 to the new post of surveyor of the public buildings, was, like Hadfield, keenly alive to certain difficulties in the design, and proposed changes which Thornton was quick to oppose. He addressed a printed letter "To the Members of the House of Representatives of the United States," January 1, 1805, and a pamphlet war ensued, from which Latrobe, supported by President Jefferson, emerged embittered but victorious, remaining in charge of the work until after the outbreak of the War of 1812.

Thornton's designs in architecture were not limited to those already mentioned. For George Washington he supervised the erection, in 1798- 99, of two houses on North Capitol Street between B and C Streets. For John Tayloe he built in 1798-1800 a fine house, the Octagon, still standing (1935), now the headquarters of the American Institute of Architects. It was distinguished by the circular rooms at the corner, in one of which, while the house was occupied by Madison after the burning of the White House in 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed. In 1800 Thornton made for Lawrence Lewis, who had married Washington's adopted daughter, Eleanor Custis, a design for Woodlawn, which appears to have been followed in this fine mansion in Fairfax County, Virginia. The same year he appears to have given Bishop John Carroll [q.v.] a plan for the cathedral in Baltimore, but Latrobe's design was followed. Homewood in Baltimore, a Carroll house, may possibly follow a design of Thornton's. Beginning about 1812 Tudor Place in Georgetown was erected from his designs. Mrs. Thornton says in her diary that her husband was the architect of Brentwood in the District of Columbia, and that he gave a plan for the house of Mr. Dobson in Stokes County, North Carolina, in 1805. The Octagon, Tudor Place, and Brentwood show a plastic and spatial variety and mastery rarely found in America before their time. In 1817 Jefferson outlined to Thornton his plan for the University of Virginia and requested suggestions for the fronts of the pavilions, as "models of taste & good architecture, & of a variety of appearance" (letter quoted in Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect, 1916, p. 75). Thornton supplied two sketches, from one of which Pavilion VII was built (Ibid., pp. 75-76, 187, fig. 212).

At the close of Thornton's service as a commissioner in May 1802, Jefferson appointed him clerk in the State Department, in charge of patents- the first functionary specially assigned to this matter. He is credited (Daily National Intelligencer, September 7, 1814) with having saved the Patent Office from destruction on the capture of Washington in 1814. As superintendent of patents he continued in charge of the Patent Office until his death, March 28, 1828 (G. W. Evans, "The Birth and Growth of the Patent Office," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, volume XXII, 1919, 105-24). His own wide curiosity and inventiveness admirably fitted him for this position. A memorandum in his papers lists eight patents of his own between 1802 and 1827, dealing with improvements in boilers, stills, firearms, and other devices.

Thornton's interests and activities were astonishingly varied. He drew and painted with facility. Miniatures by him and his copy of Stuart's profile portrait of Washington survive, as do the manuscripts of three unpublished novels (Thornton Papers, Library of Congress). The Magellanic gold medal of the American Philosophical Society was awarded to him in February 1793 for his Cadmus: or, a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language, published the same year. Appended was an "Essay on the mode of teaching the Surd or Deaf, and consequently Dumb to speak." This last Dr. Alexander Graham Bell [q.v.] calls the first work upon the education of the deaf actually written and published in America, and says its suggestions "certainly have not received that attention from practical' teachers of the deaf that their importance deserves" (Association Review, April 1900, pp. 113-15). Thornton's Quaker antecedents and humanitarianism also led him, as early as 1788, to strive for the freeing of slaves through African colonization. In 1791, when at Tortola, he was endeavoring to send blacks to Sierra Leone at the time of the second negro settlement there under the presidency of Henry Thornton, and his pamphlet Political Economy: Founded in Justice and Humanity, published in 1804, advocated the abolition of slavery. In later years he was active in the American Colonization Society. Thornton was concerned also in the effort to found a national university in Washington. Following Washington's gift of stock in the Potomac Company to further the enterprise, announced in 1795, the Commissioners set aside a site, and memorialized Congress to authorize the acceptance of contributions. In later years Thornton's sympathies were enlisted by the liberation of South America. In 1815 he published a tract, Outlines of a Constitution for United North & South Columbia, a grandiose dream of union, proposing a capital city near Panama, "where a canal may be made from sea to sea, by locks" (p. 8). To his many other vocations Thornton added those of soldier and magistrate. He became a lieutenant and captain of militia, a justice of the peace, and a commissioner in bankruptcy. His business enterprises, from the raising of merino sheep and the breeding of race horses to steamboats and gold mines-he issued a sanguine prospectus of the North Carolina Gold Mine Company in 1806-were uniformly unsuccessful, but his straitened means never prevented him from mingling in the best society, in which he was a general favorite. He assiduously cultivated the acquaintance of persons of distinction, and enjoyed the friendship of the Earl of Buchan, of Franklin, Rittenhouse, Washington, Jefferson, Volney, Trumbull, John Randolph, and particularly of the Madisons.

The best personal characterization of Thornton is the one published just after his death by William Dunlap [q.v.]: "He was a scholar and a gentleman-full of talent and eccentricity-a Quaker by profession, a painter, a poet, and a horse-racer-well acquainted with the mechanic arts .... He was a 'man of infinite humour humane and generous, yet fond of field sports his company was a complete antidote to dullness" (History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, volume II, 1918 ed., p; 8). He died in Washington and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery.

[Many papers of Thornton and his wife, including a number of studies for the Capitol and other buildings, particularly Tudor Place, are in the Library of Congress; certain drawings for private buildings were in the possess ion of the late Glenn Brown, Esq., of Washington, D. C.; other papers are at the office of public buildings and grounds, and in the office of the superintendent of the Capitol. Many of. the personal papers in the Library of Congress were published by A. C. Clark, in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, volume XVIII (1915), and a memorial to Thornton published by the Columbian Institute after his death is quoted. For contemporary allusions see J.P. B. de Warville, Nouveau Voyage dans Jes Etats-Unis de l'Amerique Septentrionale, fait en 1788 (3 volumes, 1791); Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of John Trumbull (1841); and Letters of Horatio Greensburgh to His Brother, Henry Greenough (1887). See also Glenn Brown, in Architectural Records, July-September 1896, pp. 53-70, H ist. of the U. S. Capitol, volume I (1900), pp. 81-88, with portrait, and The Octagon (1917?), pp. 16-25, the biographical sketches to be used with a certain caution; Documentary History of the ... U. S. Capitol (1904); W. M. Watson, In Memoriam: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (1872), pp. 97-101; W. B. Bryan, A History of the National Capital (2 volumes, 1914-16); Gaillard Hunt, "William Thornton and Negro Colonization," Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, April 1920; death notice in Daily National Intelligencer (Washington), March 29, 1828. The degree of Thornton's responsibility for the design of the Capitol has been reconsidered, with many additional docs., by Fiske Kimball and Wells Bennett, in Art Studies: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern, volume I (1923). For the Octagon, see Brown, The Octagon; for Woodlawn and Tudor Place, W. R. Ware, The Georgian Period (3 volumes, 1899-1902); for Brentwood, H. F. Cunningham and J. A. Younger, Measured Drawings of Georgian Architecture in the District of Columbia, 1750-1820 (1914). The Gilbert Stuart paintings of Thornton and his wife in the T. B. Clarke coll., have been frequently reproduced.]

F.K.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 104-105:

THORNTON, William, superintendent of the patent-office, born in Tortola, W. I.; died in Washington, D. C., in 1827. He was educated as a physician, and lived for many years in Philadelphia, where he was well known in the circle of scientific men, being chosen a member of the American philosophical society on 19 January, 1787. He was a skilled architect, and designed the Philadelphia library building, which was completed in 1790. He removed to Washington, D. C., when the seat of government was transferred to that place, and drew the plans and superintended the erection of the first capitol building in its early stages. He was one of the first to act as commissioner of public buildings, and was the first head of the patent-office, being appointed superintendent in 1802, and serving till the time of his death. He published “Cadmus, or the Elements of Written Language” (Philadelphia, 1793).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 104-105.


THROOP, Amos Gager, 1811-1894, businessman, politician, abolitionist, philanthropist.  In 1891, he founded the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), earlier known as Throop University.  Mayor of Pasadena, California, elected in 1888.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.