Thompson Family History

I was recently sitting comfortably in a reading room of the Library of Congress, going through some papers left behind by Hermann Hagedorn, William Boyce Thompson’s biographer. I was minding my own business, trying to speed-read interviews related to the Magnate’s acquisition of a mining venture in Ely, Nevada, dreaming of my next cup of [...]

After discovering that so many old family homes have been knocked down, it’s refreshing to find one that has survived.  That said, Julius Kruttschnitt’s magnificent summer villa at 2077 Forest View in Burlingame, Ca., came perilously close to suffering the pitiless blows of a wrecking ball. Builder Otto J. Miller bought the Julius Kruttschnitt, Sr., [...]

We caught up with Boyce Thompson, Jr., on the eve of the release of his new album, Old Trains/Fast Tracks, to ask the reclusive “artist” a few questions about the forthcoming record, which has received faint praise, at best, from critics who dared to listen to preview copies. This is about the 20th album of [...]

In October 1908, John Quincy Boner returned home to Milan, Missouri, from a trip to Kansas City. For several days my great, great grandfather had been complaining of a pain in his side. The pain wasn’t bad enough, though, to keep the 78-year-old from going uptown on the 27th. Downtown Milan probably didn’t look a [...]

In one of the greatest tragedies in Thompson family history, officials at the Phoenician hotel apparently raised Mabel Thompson Filor’s historically significant Phoenix estate to make way for the Canyon Suites, a bland collection of luxury vacation cottages. A Starwood Hotel website — Starwood bought the Phoenician about 10 years ago — attempts to put [...]

Dear Bill: My father, after serving in the legislature and helping write the Constitution of Montana, was elected Mayor of Butte. That meant I was free to run around the City hall where I met an “expug” who was City Jailer. He taught me to punch bag and the manly art of self-defense. I was [...]

History has been brutally unkind to Bernard Kock, my third great grandfather. Historians use all sorts of pejoratives to describe him — swindler, scoundrel, opportunist — and perhaps with good reason. But it’s pretty clear that at least some of the enmity toward Kock is rooted in the fact that he made Abraham Lincoln look like a hypocrite. Kock convinced the president, [...]

There are no signs to identify the donor of the minerals and ornamental rock carvings left to the American Museum of National History by William Boyce Thompson. Which is too bad, because the Colonel’s collection dominates the cave-like mineral room in the New York museum. He would steal the show. That much was clear when [...]

Here’s a story that Francis Libby probably repeatedly told his children. While he was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, he rowed General George Washington across the Hudson River and back. He received a drink of liquor for his service. Francis Libby, whose grandfather, John Libby had come to America in 1637, wasn’t very old [...]

I may have been deep asleep when my teacher covered King Phillip’s War, which was played out in New England from 1675 to 1676. But this fact would have raised me from my stupor: One of my very distant relatives, John Libby (1603-1685), lost his house and two sons in the fighting. If you are like [...]