Meriwether Jeff Thompson
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MAYOR OF ST. JOSEPH, APRIL 1859 – APRIL 1860
BRIGADIER GENERAL, C. S. A.
Meriwether Jeff Thompson was born at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, on January 22, 1826, the son of Meriwether Thompson, a native of Hanover County, Virginia, and Martha Broaddus, a native of Culpeper County, Virginia. His father was in the paymaster's department of the U.S. Army at Harper's Ferry, and both of his grandfathers were soldiers in the Revolutionary War. He was named for his father, but as a boy he frequently rode in the cart of a colored man named Jeff. That nickname was applied to him at that time, and in later life he adopted it legally. When the Baltimore & Ohio and the Winchester & Potomac Railroads came to Harper's Ferry, he was much interested in and acquired some knowledge of their steam locomotives. When he was fourteen years of age, he was sent to a military academy at Charleston, Virginia, and became captain of his company. He tried to enter the Texas Navy, but was rejected as too young.
He became self-supporting when he was seventeen years old. He secured employment in Philadelphia with a cloth house. Then he sold books-a Life of Henry Clay-in Charleston, Virginia. He took a trip through the South and in 1846, when he was twenty, he went by steamboat from St. Louis to Liberty Landing, Missouri. For a year he was clerk in a store at Liberty. In 1847 he came to St. Joseph, which had been laid out as a town only four years before. He was first employed by Perry & Young and lived in the back of their store. In 1848 he returned to Liberty to marry Miss Emily Hays, a native of Baltimore. The winters of 1848 and 1849 were very cold. In the spring of 1849 the California gold excitement transformed St. Joseph. He went to work in the store of Middleton & Riley. His two younger brothers, Broaddus Thompson, a lawyer, and Charles M. Thompson, came out from Virginia. The preliminary survey of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad line was conducted in this year, and Jeff Thompson joined the surveying party of Simeon Kemper as Commissary. During this association he acquired his knowledge of surveying and railroad-line engineering.
In 1852 Thompson made an overland wagon trip to Salt Lake City carrying goods for disposal there for his employers, Middleton & Riley. On his return to St. Joseph he became partner in a grocery store. In 1854 he became city engineer of St. Joseph and the Gazette of January 23, 1856,
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