Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/122

98 Gov. William Tryon. He was sheriff of Orange- burg in 1772, and was elected a member of the first provincial legislature, and the first state conven- tion. He was appointed colonel in 1775 of the 3d South Carolina regiment, which was known as the Rangers. His soldiers were all skilful marksmen, and he dispersed the guerillas of Gen. Robert Cunningham, the Tory leader. He fought at its head at Charleston in 1776, driving the English back from the eastern side of Sullivan's island, and was formally thanked for this service by Gov. John Rutledge and congress. He also served with Gen. Robert Howe in Georgia, was engaged with his command in the attack on Savannah under Count d'Estaing and Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, and was taken prisoner after the capture of Charleston. He served afterward under the command of Gen. Nathanael Greene. He displayed the greatest bravery during the war, and at the end of it was broken both in health and fortunes. He was elected sheriff of Orangeburg a second time, and was a member of the State constitutional convention. Thomson was engaged in the occupation of an indigo-planter until 1786, when, seeking to benefit his declining health, he visited the mineral springs in Virginia, where he died.

THOMSON, Charles West, poet, b. in Philadel- phia, Pa., in 1798; d. in York, Pa., 17 April, 1879. He was of Quaker parentage, but became a minis- ter of the Protestant Episcopal church, and in 1849 he was appointed rector of the church in York, Pa., which post he resigned in 1866. His principal works are " The Limner," prose sketches (Philadelphia, 1822); "The Phantom Barge, and other Poems " (1822) ; " Ellinor, and other Poems " (1826); "The Sylph, and other Poems "(1828); and " The Love of Home, and other Poems " (1845). He was also a contributor to periodicals.

THOMSON, Edward, M. E. bishop, b. in Portsea, part of Portsmouth, England, 12 Oct., 1810 ; d. in Wheeling, W. Va., 21 March, 1870. When he was seven years old his parents emigrated to the United States and settled in Wooster, Ohio. His father was a druggist, and this directed Edward's atten- tion to the study of medicine, which he pursued at the University of Pennsylvania. He united with the Methodist church, 29 April, 1832, the next year was licensed to exhort, and in the following July was recommended for admission into the an- nual conference. He was received in September and united with his former pastor upon the Nor- walk circuit. From the first his great abilities were apparent. In 1836 he was stationed at De- troit, where Lewis Cass, governor of the state, though a Presbyterian, was among his hearers. While there he married a daughter of Mordecai Bartley, member of congress, and afterward gov- ernor of the state. In 1837 he became principal of a seminary at Norwalk, where his success was so great that in 1843 he was offered the chancellor- ship of Michigan university, and the presidency of Transylvania college. In 1844 he was elected editor of the " Ladies' Repository " by the general conference. He was re-elected to this post in 1848. but was immediately called to the presidency of Ohio university, where he remained until 1860, when he was elected editor of the " Christian Advo- cate." Here he remained for four years, success- ful in spite of much opposition. In 1864 he was elected bishop, which office he filled until his death. He attained high rank as a lecturer and editor, and wrote much for periodicals and papers. He p was a profound student, very absent-minded, and preferred the seclusion of a college to the episcopal office; but, notwithstanding this, he was among the most eminent of those that have filled it. Indiana Asbury (now De Pauw) university gave him the degree of D. D. in 1846, and Wesleyan that of LL. D. in 1855. Bishop Thomson pub- lished " Educational Essavs " (new ed., Cincinnati, 1856); "Moral and Religious Essays" (1856); "Biographical and Incidental Sketches" (1856); " Letters from Europe " (1856) ; and " Letters from India, China, and Turkey " (2 vols., 1870).

THOMSON, Elihu, electrician, b. in Manches- ter, England, 29 March, 1853. He came to this country in 1858, and was graduated at the Central high-school in Philadelphia in 1870. He studied chemistry in an analytical laboratory, but was soon called to assist in the chemical department of the high-school, which place he held until 1876, when he was made full professor of chemistry and physics in that institution. Meanwhile, in 1875, he had been chosen professor of chemistry in the Ar- tisan's night-school in Philadelphia, and during the winter of 1876-7 he began a series of lectures on electricity at the Franklin institute. For sev- eral years he studied very closely the subject of electricity, with its special. application to artificial illumination, and in 1880 he was appointed elec- trician to the American electric company of New Britain, Conn. He at once devoted himself to in- venting, and nearly 200 patents relating to arc lighting, incandescent lighting, motor work, induc- tion systems, and similar applications have resulted. For the development of these inventions the Thom- son-Houston electric company was organized, and located its plant in Lynn, Mass. Prof. Thomson has also invented the system of electric welding, which he placed in the hands of a corporation, and it has now become an established industry. He is a member of the American philosophical society and the American academy of arts and sciences, and vice-president of the American institute of electrical engineers, and has contributed technical papers to the societies of which he is a member.

THOMSON, Frederick Bordine, missionary, b. in New Brunswick, N. J., 5 Nov., 1809 ; d. in Berne. Switzerland, 3 March, 1847. He was gradu- ated at Rutgers in 1831, and at New Brunswick theological seminary in 1834, and in 1837 sailed for Singapore as a missionary of the Dutch Re- formed church. He remained there till 1839, was then in Batavia, Java, till 1841, and afterward in Karangan, Borneo, till 1846, when feeble health forced him to leave his post. He published a " Dyak Hymn-Book," the first printed book in that language (1844), and "Brown's Catechism " in Dyak (1845), and translated into the same tongue the gospel of St. Matthew and the first twenty chap- ters of Genesis. He left an unfinished work on " The Economy of Missions."

THOMSON, James Bates, educator, b. in Springfield, Vt., 21 May, 1808; d. in Brooklyn, N. Y., 22 June, 1883. He worked on his father's farm in summer, attending a district school in winter, till 1824, when he began to teach. He was graduated at Yale in 1834, and was principal of an academy at Nantucket, Mass., from 1835 to 1842. He then went to Auburn, N. Y., and at the request of President Day, of Yale, published an abridgment of Day's algebra for the use of schools. He began in 1843 to organize and extend teachers' institutes and similar gatherings, and was actively engaged in this work for the next four or five years. In 1845 he assisted in the organization of the New York state teachers' association, and was elected its president. He removed to the city of New York in 1846, and resided there and in Brooklyn till 1868, when he took up his permanent resi-