Late in his life, while traveling through Italy, William Thompson (1838-1900) sought a meeting with Pope Leo XIII. “I thought he and I might sit down and have a confidential chat,” the former mayor of Butte (1895-1897) wrote in a February 20, 1898 letter to the Montana Standard, “but I wasn’t even invited to sit down.” Instead, […]
The Colonel’s Large Specimens Steal the Show at the American Museum of Natural History
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 […]
Margaret Maguire’s Parents Hated That She Married a Tailor
Though we know very little about the life of my third great grandmother Margaret Maguire (1794-1880), this much has been passed down: Her parents were pretty pissed when she took a tailor, John Robinson, for a first husband in Belfast Northern Ireland. Tailoring may seem like a pretty noble occupation today. But Maguire’s father, a […]
Vigilantes Turned to Ace Carpenter William Thompson for Quick and Dirty Gallows
The decent, law-abiding citizens of Virginia City, Montana, had had enough. They wanted to send a strong, clear message to Henry Plummer and his road agents who had been robbing and killing the innocent people of this frontier town. With no formal legal system in place, the vigilantes decided to take matters into their own hands. The […]
Legendary Frontiersman William Thompson Lost Everything–Several Times
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 […]
Walking in the Thompson Party Footsteps
Though I had never ventured this deep into the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, Arizona, as I looked at the rock jutting over the path, I felt like I had been here before. Then I realized: I had seen this site in the infamous Arboretum Picnic pictures. I say “infamous” only because my grandfather, William […]