My Genealogy Hound

William M. Thompson is a farmer of Hempstead County, Ark., but owes his nativity to North Carolina, his birth having occurred in Alamance County in 1846. His parents, Henry and Harriet S. (Chendenom) Thompson, were also born there, the former in 1822 and the latter in 1823. Mr. Thompson is still living in his native State, but his wife died there in 1883, both members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the father a farmer by occupation, a justice of the peace for some years, and soldier of the Confederate army during the latter part of the late war. John Thompson, the paternal grandfather, was a farmer of Alamance County, N. C., and died there when his son Henry was a small boy. William C. Clendenom, the mother’s father, was also a farmer of Alamance County, and died many years ago, his wife’s death occurring at about the age of ninety-seven years. William M. Thompson is the eldest in a family of four sons and five daughters, and until the opening of the late Civil War his life was spent on a farm, and his education received in the common schools. In 1863 he joined Company B, Second North Carolina Infantry, and besides being in the engagement at Fort Fisher was at Wilmington, Bentonville, etc., and surrendered at Greensboro, N. C, thirty miles from the place where he was born. In 1871 he came west to Arkansas, and was married in Hempstead County, Ark., to Mrs. Lucia Benson, a daughter of Samuel and Jane Kirkpatrick, who removed from their native State of North Carolina to Hempstead County, Ark., in 1852, where they died in 1867 and 1878, respectively, both having been members of the Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Thompson was born in Alamance County, N. C, and she and Mr. Thompson are the parents of a son and daughter. They own a fine farm of 407 acres five miles northeast of Washington, and in politics Mr. Thompson is a Democrat, and socially is a member of the A. F. & A. M., Whitfield Lodge No. 239, at Hope. He also belongs to the I. O. O. F., Ozan Lodge No. 10, of Washington, and the K. of H., of that town. He and Mrs. Thompson are Cumberland Presbyterians.