One visitor stood out last week among the many attendees at the 90th anniversary of the Boyce Thompson Institute: William Boyce Thompson, who came back from the dead to participate in the ceremony. He was, needless to say, hugely impressed with what the Institute had accomplished in the 84 years since last visiting the research […]
Boyce Thompson Cactus Really Does Bloom
Several trips to the Boyce Thompson Southwestern arboretum provided no evidence that the cactus named after my great uncle, Echinocereus boyce thompsonii, actually blooms. I even bought one in the visitors center and brought it home to Maryland, where it failed to bloom over several years but did succeed in ruining a couple nice shirts. […]
Thompson Family History: The First Chapter
The project started out innocently enough. I merely wanted to confirm some of the often bizarre stories my parents and grandparents had told me at family events, typically after a few drinks.
Earliest North American Relative Jailed for Assaulting Tailor
Genealogical research often turns up more than you really want to know. I got a rude reminder of this truism before the Christmas holidays, when a genealogist working in Cobourg, Ontario discovered that my earliest North American ancestor, William Thompson (1806-1849), assaulted a tailor, didn’t pay the fine, and spent time in the lock-up. The […]
Debate Rages Over Which William Thompson Was Actually the Man
Was William Thompson da man? Or was it William Boyce Thompson? A dissident family faction weighs in.
The Inside Story of the Cumberland-Ely Deal: How William Boyce Thompson Outflanked the Guggenheims
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 […]