Researching William Thompson

Thompson was known for his over-the-top campaigning and uncensored language that, along with his towering height and weight, earned him the nickname "Big Bill". Upon his reelection in 1919, Thompson was at the forefront of the movement for the Chicago Public Library system and education officials to censor and ban many texts and historical recollections coming from the United Kingdom.

Though Thompson was a popular figure, his popularity collapsed after his death, when two safe-deposit boxes were found in his name containing over $1.8 million ($ million today) in cash and bonds.

Born into the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy of wealthy landowners and merchants of Cork society, his attempt to will his estate to the cooperative movement after his death sparked a long court case as his family fought successfully to have the will annulled. According to E. T. Craig, this decision to will his estate to the cooperative movement was taken after a visit to the pioneering Ralahine Commune.

Marxist James Connolly described him as the "first Irish socialist" and a forerunner to Marx, who cited Thompson in his works as well as being an influence upon Marx's thought.

Thompson was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, where he attended the common schools. He assisted his father to clear a farm in the dense forests of Ohio, and when twenty-one began to study law in the office of Columbus Delano. In 1839 he went by steamboat down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi River to Montrose in what was then Iowa Territory, before settling in what is now Mount Pleasant, Iowa. In 1843, he was a member of the Iowa Territory House of Representatives. He served as chief clerk of the two succeeding sessions, and became secretary of the 1846 Iowa state constitutional convention.

Iowa was admitted to the union effective December 1846, and given two seats in the U.S. House. The First Iowa General Assembly established the boundaries of those districts in February 1847, and set elections for August 2, 1847 to name their representatives in the Thirtieth Congress (from December 1847 to March 1849). Thompson, running as a Democrat, defeated Whig Party candidate J.B. Browne by 544 votes. The legality of Iowa's 1847 congressional elections was questioned because Iowa Governor Ansel Briggs never signed the law authorizing the elections, but the U.S. House nevertheless seated the winners.

In 1848, Thompson was renominated, and ran in the August general election against Whig Party member Daniel F. Miller. Thompson was certified as the winner by the Iowa Secretary of State, and upon presenting his credentials to the U.S. House was initially allowed to continue representing his district. In the Thirty-first Congress, Thompson served as chairman of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department. However, in response to a challenge filed by Miller alleging that Thompson's law partner stole the poll book for Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), and Democrats' claim that Whigs had bought votes of Mormons in Kanesville, the House declared Thompson's seat vacant on June 29, 1850. The special election was a rematch of the 1848 election, but the second time, Miller defeated Thompson. In all, Thompson served in Congress from December 1847 to June 29, 1850.

For several years he was editor of the Iowa State Gazette. He was elected chief clerk of the Iowa House of Representatives in 1861, by a unanimous vote. On July 31, 1861, after the outbreak of the Civil War, Thompson was commissioned as a captain in Company E of the 1st Regiment Iowa Volunteer Cavalry. On May 18, 1863, he was promoted to major, and on June 20, 1864, to colonel. On March 13, 1865, as the end of the war approached, he became a brevetted brigadier general of the Volunteers.

When the Civil War ended, Thompson's military service did not. On July 28, 1866, at the request of General George Custer, he was recommissioned as a captain in the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the regular army, and fought in the Indian Wars. He remained with the Army until his retirement on December 15, 1875, just a few months before Custer and most of the 7th Cavalry was massacred at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Thompson died in Tacoma, Washington and was buried there.

He was born in New Brunswick in 1786, the son of a United Empire Loyalist, and came to Grantham Township with his family in 1809. He served as captain in the local militia during the War of 1812 and fought at the Battle of Queenston Heights. He was taking prisoner by the Americans while on a scouting expedition. When he returned, his father had died and their property damaged; he settled in Toronto Township. He built a sawmill with his brother in 1817. During the Upper Canada Rebellion, he served as colonel in the York militia and became lieutenant colonel in 1846. In 1824, he was elected to the 9th Parliament of Upper Canada for York and Simcoe. He was a conservative member, with close ties to members of the so-called "Family Compact". After several attempts at reelection, he retired to local politics. In 1844, he became a member of the township council and was reeve in 1851.

He died in Toronto Township in 1860.

His grandson, Alfred Burke Thompson, later served in the provincial and federal parliaments.

His most notable literary work is his 1888 poem of his experiences in the Civil War, "High Tide at Gettysburg."

Thompson was born in Ireland and emigrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. During the French and Indian War, Thompson served as a captain in the Kittanning Expedition under John Armstrong.

After news of the Battle of Bunker Hill reached Pennsylvania in 1775, Thompson was appointed colonel of a rifle battalion and was sent to Massachusetts to help in the defense of Boston. His unit was known as Thompson's Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion, or the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment. After Thompson's company of Pennsylvania sharpshooters drove back a Britishlanding-party on November 9, 1775, he was made a brigadier-general, to the displeasure of George Washington, who had reservations about Thompson's abilities.

Sent to reinforce American troops in Canada, Thompson was captured during an attack on the enemy at Trois-Rivières in Quebec on June 8, 1776. He was paroled, but not exchanged for four years, and so he could not reenter military service. Thompson blamed Congressman Thomas McKean for hindering his exchange; his criticism became so harsh that he was censured by Congress. McKean successfully sued Thompson for libel.

Thompson married Catherine Ross, sister of George Ross, signer of the Declaration of Independence for Pennsylvania.

While on parole in Philadelphia on December 17, 1778 he became an early Member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick

After finally being exchanged for Baron Riedesel, Thompson died at his home near Carlisle.

Thompson Street in the Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City was named after General Thompson, as well as – originally – the adjacent Vesuvio Playground.

In 1928, he rowed as the number four man in the American boat, which was made up of the University of California crew and won the gold medal in the eights.

Graduated from University of California in 1929 with BS degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering; married Sally Lincoln in 1933 with whom he had two sons, William G Thompson Jr. (1936) and Bruce W Thompson (1945). Active in community service, he was president of the school board and the planning commission of the City of El Segundo, CA at the time of his death.

Born in 1839 near Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nation, Thompson was an infant when his family moved to what was then Mexican Texas. They returned to the Choctaw Nation in 1840 after an attack on their village on Attoyac Bayou in what is now Rusk County, Texas. Soon afterwards both of his parents died, leaving him and a brother Arthur to live with their elderly grandmother Margaret McCoy-Thompson near Fort Washita, before being sent back to Mississippi, where they were raised by their maternal grandparents. The brothers entered the Confederate Army there when the Civil War broke out.

After the Civil War, Thompson initially returned to Texas and re-established connections with extended family among the Mount Tabor Indian Community. He married and started a family there. They moved north to Indian Territory in 1889, settling at Marlow in the Chickasaw Nation.

Educated at Monkton Combe School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he served in the Great War as an officer in the Royal Engineers. Ordained in 1921, he was initially principal of the Stuart Memorial College, Isfahan then archdeacon of the area until his elevation to the episcopate as the third Anglican bishop of Iran in 1935. He retired in 1960 and died 15 years later.

William Thompson's daughter, Margaret, married Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, who succeeded him as in Iran; their daughter in turn, Guli Francis-Dehqani, became the first bishop of Loughborough and subsequently bishop of Chelmsford.

He was born in Queanbeyan to surveyor James Banford Thompson and Margaret Carroll. From 1878 to 1885 he was a clerk in the Colonial Architect's office, before becoming a quantity surveyor and moving to Ryde in 1898. On 4 March 1885 he had married Florence Single, with whom he had two children. He owned a horse farm on the Hawkesbury River and was a founder of the William Thompson Masonic School at Baulkham Hills NSW, which operated from 1922 to 1972, and the New South Wales Masonic Schools Welfare Fund which, as A Start in Life, continues to assist indigent youth. He was a Freemason and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New South Wales 1914-1924. In 1913 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as the Liberal member for Ryde, serving until his retirement in 1920. In 1923 he established The Masonic Youth Welfare Fund. Thompson died at Ashfield in 1937.

William Hertzog Thompson was born in 1895 in Greeley, Colorado, to Lorin Andrew Thompson, a newspaper editor and postal inspector, and Annie Hertzog Thompson, a mother of four sons and active church member. In 1903 the family moved to Omaha, Nebraska where Thompson eventually graduated from the University of Omaha (later part of the University of Nebraska) in 1917 and he received his master's from the University of Nebraska in 1925 in educational psychology. Thompson worked as a Presbyterian minister and a high school teacher and coach at various schools in Iowa and Nebraska. In 1922 Thompson married Dorothy Long who was a teacher at the Iowa School for the Deaf where her father, J. Schuyler Long, was the long time principal and published the first sign-language dictionary. In 1930 Thompson received a Ph.D. in psychology from Ohio State University, where his uncle, William Oxley Thompson had been president, and then Thompson went on to teach and serve as a dean at the University of Nebraska and University of Omaha until he retired in 1960. Thompson's second daughter, Susan Buffett, married Warren Buffett in 1952.

William Thompson was one of the earliest investors in Buffett's partnerships. Thompson died in 1981, and Thompson's daughter, Susan Buffett and her family donated the "William H. Thompson Scholars Learning Community" at the University of Nebraska (Omaha) in his honor.

He researched the exploitation and management of the stocks of Pacific halibut for the fisheries department in British Columbia in the early 20th century, as well as the restoration Fraser River sockeye salmon run in the mid twentieth century.

Thompson was the director of the School of Fisheries at the University of Washington from 1934, and between 1937 and 1943 he was the director of the international Pacific Salmon Commission working in Canada and Alaska. He founded the Fisheries Research Institute of the University of Washington in 1947. Thompson retired in 1958 at the age of 70.