A. J. M. THOMPSON.
A. M. Thompson, farmer, who resides one mile east of Caseyville, is the son of Capt. Andrew Thompson and Rebecca (McCorkle) Thompson. His father was from Tazwell County, Virginia, and came to Union County in 1811. He was a militia captain in the War of 1812, and saw many of the hardships incident to a life in Union County in those early days. His mother sailed from Belfast. Ireland, when a child of six years. She was married in Montgomery County, Va. Mr. Thompson's paternal ancestors were of Scotch descent, his grandfather coming to this country before the Revolutionary War. His maternal ancestors were Irish. The subject of this sketch was born in what is now Webster County, but it was then a part of UnionCounty, in 1816. He removed to present UnionCounty before the division, and has consequently always been a resident of UnionCounty. He received a very limited education in the log school houses of those days, attending the common schools for two years. By extensive intercourse with the world and close attention to current events, he has developed into a very intelligent man, who has a fine appreciation of good language, and a good delivery of his vocabulary, which is choice and free from slang. At the age of seventeen he became deeply mortified one day, at being obliged to make his mark, and then bought a half-quire of paper and never ceased until he became a good penman. He entered a store at Morganfield, at the age of twenty-two, and with short intermissions served three engagements as clerk for various merchants. He was appointed Deputy Sheriff under High Sheriff Wm. Davis, who farmed his privilege to Acting Sheriff Grant Blackwell. After that, Mr. Thompson, on a joint ticket with George Parker, held the office of Sheriff for six years. He, then, in 1857, entered the mercantile business at Caseyville, Ky. During the war he was for a short time out of commercial life, and again entered it to finally retire from active business life, to his home, one mile east of Caseyville, in 1876. Here, upon a beautiful eminence, from which the undulating country rolls away in glorious views, he is spending his declining years. Mr. Thompson was married in 1852 to Miss Mary E. Pierson, the daughter of Will S. Pierson, of UnionCounty. Six children have blessed this union. One, Fannie Letitia, died at an early age. The survivors are John B., Andrew W., Mary Melvina, Maria Charlton, and James McCorkle. John is married to a Miss Wolfe, and is engaged in farming in UnionCounty. Mary married Mr. Howard M. Davis, a lawyer of UnionCounty, and Charlton married Mr. John D. Hedges, a farmer of UnionCounty. Mr. Thompson has visited the ancestral home of his family in Virginia, and saw the chestnut log fort-like building in Tazwell County, where the people, in early days congregated to defend themselves from the assaults of the Indians. He has been a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church since 1848, and is now a ruling elder in that church. He has also belonged to every temperance organization that has ever been known in his district, and, in his temperance views is of the ultra stripe. In politics, he is a Democrat. He owns about 1,000 acres of land, 600 acres of which are under cultivation, and 300 acres of which he manages personally. About 300 are rented and leased to various parties. Mr. Thompson's history is interesting and instructive, and is contemporary with the county. Raised in this country at an early day, he was frequently obliged; in traveling over it, to go eight or ten miles before he could stop at a house to warm. He remembers when the "General Mercer Survey" of 5,000 acres contained no settler except an occasional hunter. Dr. Jones, who now owns a large portion of the tract, settled on it in 1839. The gathering years sit lightly upon this patriarch's brow, and with his fourscore years he seems as young as many men of sixty. Honored by all good citizens; beloved by his brethren in the church, and respected by old and young, he is filling up the measure of a useful life that will have been, at its close, an epistle well worthy the reading of all men.
