Thompson Family History

Who da man? That’s the question that has perplexed this blogger for years. By most accounts, William Boyce Thompson, the wily financier who was ambassador to Russia and left a fortune to botanical research, was the great patriarch of the family. Biographies describe him as a brilliant, though manipulative, self-made millionaire. Now a dissident family [...]

In 1859, William Thompson won an important commission to build a government fort and houses in Yankton, then the extreme frontier of the Northwest Territory. Unfortunately, before the young frontiersman could get paid for his work tragedy struck: Indians burned the buildings.  The situation left the 21-year-old penniless. It wouldn’t be the first time. An unusual number of financial tragedies befell the hard-working William Thompson [...]

William Thompson was a very practical, honest, hard-working man. But he also had some some annoying personality quirks, friends and acquaintances weren’t impressed with his looks, and his children were scared to death of him. That’s the very mixed portrait of this great American pioneer that emerges from interviews done 80-odd years ago with the people who knew him. The sometimes snarky reminiscences [...]