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Rh dence in the latter city. ITe received the degree of LL. D. from Hamilton college in 1853, and from the University of Tennessee inj.882. Mr. Thomson attained considerable reputation as a conchologist. He published a very successful series of mathemati- cal works, his arithmetical works alone having a sale of about 100,000 copies annually. His books include '• School Algebra " (New Haven, 1843) ; a series of arithmetics (New York, 1845-52); and " Arithmetical Analysis " (1854).

THOMSON, John Edgar, civil engineer, b. in Springfield, Delaware co., Pa., 10 Feb., 1808 ; d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 27 May, 1874. He was the son of John Thomson, the engineer who planned the first experimental railroad in the United States, and was thoroughly trained and educated in the pro- fession by his father. In 1827 he began his own career in the engineering corps that was employed upon the original surveys of the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad, having received his appoint- ment from the secretary of the board of canal com- missioners of Pennsylvania, and three years later he entered the service of the Camden and Amboy railroad as principal assistant engineer of the east- ern division. In 1832 he was appointed chief en- gineer of the Georgia railroad, which then con- trolled the longest line under a single company in this country, and later he was its general manager. In 1847 he became chief engineer of the Pennsyl- vania railroad, and in 1852 he was made its presi- dent, which office he held until his death. Mr. Thomson took chief charge of the road before it was finished, and during the twenty-eight years of his administration dividends were regularly paid on the stock with the exception of a single semi- annual dividend in 1857. When his presidency began, the Pennsylvania company owned 246 miles of road and had a capital of $13,000,000; and it has since become a corporation controlling 2,346 miles of railroad and 66 miles of canal, with a capi- tal of $150,000,000. Mr. Thomson possessed re- markable engineering ability and executive skill. He was connected with other railroad enterprises in various parts of the country, and was a director in many companies.

THOMSON, John Renshaw, senator, b. in Philadelphia, Pa., 25 Sept., 1800; d. in Princeton, N. J., 13 Sept., 1862. He studied for some time at Princeton, but left without taking his degree, in order to pursue a commercial career. He went to China in 1817, and in 1820 had regularly estab- lished himself in the Chinese trade, and opened a house in Canton, where President Monroe appoint- ed him U. S. consul in 1823. He returned to the United States in 1825, married a sister of Com. Robert F. Stockton, and resided at Princeton. He was appointed a director of the Camden and Am- boy railroad in 1835, which office he held during his lifetime. He canvassed the state in 1842 in support of the Constitutional convention that met in 1844, and was nbminated the same year for gov- ernor by the Democratic party, but was defeated. On the resignation of Com. Stockton as U. S. sena- tor in 1853, Mr. Thomson was elected for the re- mainder of the term, and he was re-elected in 1857 for six years. His second wife was a daughter of Gen. Aaron Ward, and after Mr. Thomson's death she married Gov. Thomas Swann of Maryland.

THOMSON, Mortimer, humorist, b." in Riga, Monroe co., N. Y., 2 Sept., 1832 ; d. in New York city, 25 June, 1875. He was taken to Ann Arbor, Mich., by his parents in childhood, and entered the University of Michigan, but was expelled, with about forty others, for belonging to college secret societies. After going on the stage, and then travel- ling as a salesman for a New York firm, he adopted journalism as a profession. He was first brought into notice by his letters from Niagara Falls, in the New York " Tribune," and he also wrote rhymed police-court reports, and a series of sketches of New York fortune-tellers, which was afterward pub- lished in book-form as " The Witches of New York " (New York, 1859). His report of the Pierce- Butler sale of slaves at Savannah, Ga., about 1859, occupied several pages of the " Tribune," and was reprinted in the other daily papers, translated into several foreign languages, and circulated by the Anti-slavery society as a tract. During about eight years he delivered many popular lectures, includ- ing one in rhyme on " Pluck " and one on " Cheek " in prose. His wife was a daughter of Mrs. Parton, " Fanny Fern." Thomson's books, as well as most of his fugitive writings, appeared under the pen- name of " Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P. B.," which had been given him by the editor of a university magazine to which his earliest contributions were made. Thomson afterward asserted that it signi- fied " Queer Kritter, Philander Doesticks, Perfect Brick." His works include " Doesticks — What he Says " (New York, 1855) ; " Plu-ri-bus-tah : a Song that's by No Author," a travesty of Longfellow's " Hiawatha " (1856) ; " History and Records of the Elephant Club," with "Knight Russ Ockside, M. D." (Edward F. Underhill) ; " Nothing to Say, being a Satire on Snobbery " (1857) ; and several smaller humorous collections.

THOMSON, Samuel, physician, b. in Alstead, N. H., 9 Feb., 1769; d. in Boston, Mass., in 1843. He was the originator of the so-called Thomso- nian system of medicine. He published " Materia Medica and Family Physician " (Albany) ; " New Guide to Health, and Family Physician " (new ed., London, 1849) ; and his " Life and Medical Dis- coveries " (Boston, 1825 ; enlarged ed., 1832).

THOMSON, William McClnre, clergyman, b. in Springfield (now Spring Dale) near Cincinnati, Ohio, 31 Dec, 1806. He was graduated at Miami university, Ohio, in 1826, studied at Princeton theological seminary in 1826-'7, and was ordained as an evangelist by the presbytery of Cincinnati on 12 Oct., 1831. He was sent as a missionary to Syria and Palestine in 1833, remained there until 1849, and was afterward again in the Holy Land from 1850 till 1857 and from 1859 till 1876. He is at present a resident of New York city. Dr. Thomson is accepted as an authority in the department of archaeological research, to which he has devoted himself. His works, besides being great aids to the verification of facts that are related in the Scriptures, and giving evidence of profound learning and critical acumen, have a decided literary value from his skill in reproducing the local color and types and working them into artistic Eictures of the past and present life of the Holy Land. He has written u The Land and the Book, or Biblical Illustrations drawn from the Manners and Customs, the Scenes and Scenery of the Holy Land" (2 vols., New York, 1859; London, 1860; new ed., with the results of recent explorations, vols., 1880-6), and " The Land of Promise : Travels in Modern Palestine, illustrative of Biblical History, Manners, and Customs " (New York, 1865), and has contributed articles to the " Bibliotheca Sacra " and the " American Biblical Repository." —His cousin, Samuel Harrison, clergyman, b. in Nicholas countv, Kv., 26 Aug., 1813; d. in Pasedena, Cal., 2 'Sept., 1882, was graduated at Hanover college, Ind., in 1837, and was elected professor of mathematics there in 1844. In 1857 he was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian