Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/151

 THOMPSON

THOMPSON

1754, and his widow married Josiah Pierce of Woburn about 1756. Benjamin Thompson, Jr., attended the common schools of Woburn, and private schools at Byfield and Medford, Mass.; was aa apprentice clerk to John Appleton, an importer of British goods at Salem, Mass. , 1766-69, and subse- quently to a dry goods merchant of Boston. He devoted his leisure to the study of mathemat- ics, French, music, drawing, and to me- chanical and philoso- phical experiments. He studied medicine with Dr. John Hay in Woburn; attended, with his friend. Loam- mi Baldwin (q.v.), a course of scientific lectures at Harvard college, and taught scliool in Wilmington and Bradford, and in Rumford (Concord), N.H. He was mar- ried in January, 1773, to Sarah, daughter of the Rev. Timothy Walker, and widow of Col. Benja- min Rolfe of Rumford, N.H. He was soon after commissioned major of the 2d provincial regiment by Governor AVentworth, an appointment which caused him to be suspected of disloyalty to the cause of liberty in 1775. His house was mobbed, and he sought refuge in flight to Woburn, leav- ing his wife and infant daughter in Rumford. At Woburn he was arrested, but after a trial be- fore his townsmen emphatically acquitted of dis- loyalty. His unsuccessful application to General Washington for a commission in the Continental army, the result probably of his connection with the provincial militia in New Hampshire, caused him to leave Woburn, Oct. 7, 1775, and he proceeded overland to Newport, R.I., and thence on board the British frigate Scarborough to Boston. This flight was followed in 1778 by his proscription, and in 1781 by the confiscation of his property. On the evacuation of Boston in 1776, he was sent with the news to England, where he was received with favor and taken into the ofi6.ce of Lord George Germain, one of the secretaries of state, by whom he was appointed secretary for Georgia. Having resumed his scien- tific studies and experiments in gunpowder, he pviblished the results of some of his investigations in the Transact ionsof the Royal society of London, to which he was elected a fellow, April 23, 1779. He served as under-secretary for the colonies in 1780, and in 1781, in pursuance of his commis- sion as lieutenant-colonel commandant of King's American dragoons at New York, he returned to

America, landing, in consequence of contrary winds, at Charleston, S.C, where he remained for a short time in command of various companies of detached cavalry, on one occasion routing Gen- eral Marion. Upon his arrival in New York he raised his regiment of dragoons and encamped near Flushing, Long Island. At the close of the war, the regiment, having seen no active service, was disbanded, and Colonel Thompson returned to England. On his way to Vienna to join in the threatened war between Austria and the Turks, he was the guest of Prince Maximilian at Stras- burg, who gave him a friendly letter to his uncle, the elector of Bavaria. The introduction resulted in an invitation to enter the latters service, and having visited England to obtain permission from the British government, where he also received the honor of knighthood from George III., he re- turned to Munich in October, 1785; was taken into the elector's intimate service as aide-de- camp and chamberlain, and furnished with a mag- nificent equiment, including his residence, corps of servants and military staff. He introduced a new system of " oi-der, discipline and economy among the troops; " organized a military acad- emy; founded workshops for the soldiers and also for the mendicants of the citj' of Munich, there- by regulating the fearful pauperism of the times, and established a hospital for those too infirm for active labor. He was also interested in the improve- ment of public roads and highways, and converted a waste region of some six miles in circumference into a garden, including a valuable stock-farm, and known as the English Garden, wherein a monument to the founder was placed in 1795. Sir Benjamin was made a knight of the order of St. Stanislaus by the King of Poland; commission- ed elector 2)ro tempore; subsequently command- er-in-chief of the general staff; appointed privy councillor of state and head of tiie war depart- ment, and in 1791 was invested with the rank of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, choosing Rumford as the title of his new dignity. In ad- dition to his experiments as a political economist. Count Rumford engaged in meteorological re- search; investigated the properties of gunpowder in which he had always been actively interested, and the nutritive value of various articles of food with special reference to the practical relief of the poor, even publishing rules for the construc- tion of public kitchens. He is also accredited the honor of discovering the true doctrine of lieat, and consequently of the correlation and equiva- lence of physical forces. In 1795-96 he visited Italy and Great Britain for the benefit of his health; securing the successful adoption of many of his charitable measures, especially that of the public kitchen, in Edinburgh, London and Dublin, and receiving in the last city the thanks of the