Progressive Men of Iowa
1899

THOMPSON, Francis Marion, of Rock Rapids, is a brother of J. K. P. Thompson, whose sketch is included in this work, so his ancestry need not be repeated. He was born in Carey, Ohio, October 11, 1842, attended school with his brother, and came with his parents from Ohio to Clayton county, Iowa, in 1857. He was taught music by his mother, and at the age of 15 could read music better than print. Later he was under the instruction of George F.  Root, of Chicago. From his 15th year he devoted much of his time to singing and did evangelistic singing after he was converted and admitted to the church. He was prominent in church and Sunday school work until he, with his brother, enlisted in the Twenty-tirst Iowa Volunteer infantry, August 15, 1862, preferring this to going to college. The regiment was commanded by Col. Samuel Merrill, and was in many engagements, among them those of Hartsville, Mo., Milligan's Bend, Vicksburg campaign, bombardment of Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, where General Grant highly complimented the regiment on being the first in and the last out of the fight, Champion Hill, Big Black River Bridge, and other engagements. In the last named fight Mr. Thompson was one of those who carried Colonel Merrill off the field when he was wounded. He was never hit but once and that was by a spent ball which struck his toe and did him no harm.  The regiment afterward went through the Texas campaign and Mobile campaign, and up the Red river and was present at the surrender of Gen. Kirby Smith. While in camp at Dauphin Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay he was afflicted with trouble with his eyes, which became rapidly worse and resulted in almost total blindness. In the fall of 1865 his old colonel interested himself in the soldier boy who had helped to carry him off the battlefield, and sent him to Chicago, where he was for eleven months under the treatment of a celebrated oculist. His right eye was taken out and his left eye partially saved, so that he saw with the use of an artificial pupil, using a very strong glass. During the time he was entirely blind the government gave him a pension of $8 a month, which increased from time to time until in 1893 he was receiving $72 a month, but Hoke Smith, then secretary of the interior, had this pension reduced to $30 a month. 

In 1875 Mr. Thompson went to Rock Rapids and the next year opened the first agricultural implement establishment in the town. He soon traded for a farm near town, but the grasshoppers destroyed everything and he returned to town and went into the drug business with George C. Wood. He objected to selling whisky, so his partner sold out to J. M. Webb, and for the same reason Mr. Webb sold out to Mr. Thompson. The business was a very successful one. The strain on his eyesight compelled him to retire from this business and in 1887 he took his family to California. Returning to Iowa he, with others, organized the Doon Savings bank. In the spring of 1896 he and his brother, J. F. Thompson, together with others, bought a 1,000-acre tract of land near Sacramento, Cal., and were interested in building the Sacramento, Fair Oaks & Orange Vale electric railway. The Thompson family are republicans and F. M. cast his first vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1864. He is past commander of Dunlap Poet No.  147, G. A. R., in Rock Rapids, the poet having been named after the lieutenant colonel of his regiment, who was killed in the charge at Vicksburg, May 22, 1863. He is a past aid-de-camp on the department commander's staff and past assistant Inspector-general on the staff of the commander-in-chief. He s a past master of Border Lodge No 406, A. F. & A. M., past high priest of Lyon Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, and past excellent grand master of Third Vail Grand Chapter of Iowa, Royal Arch Masons.

He was married October 3, 1872, to Nettie Wiltee, daughter of Dr. A. Wiltse, of Strawberry Point, Iowa. They have had three children, Ella E., born June 5, 1878, who is especially interested in music and is a graduate of the Rock Rapids high school, and is now a student of Cedar Rapids Business college; Genie M., born August 11, 1880; Gertie V., born November 21, 1883. The family are all members of the Methodist church.

THOMPSON, Col. James Knox Polk, of Rock Rapids, Iowa, was born near Carey, Ohio August 21, 1845.  His father, Matthew Thompson, who was a soldier of the war of 1812, was born at Head Elk, Cecil county, Md., January 8, 1781. His paternal grandfather, Isaac Thompson, and paternal grandmother, Sarah Bell, were native of Belfort, Ireland, where they were married and where their first son, Thomas Cruse Thompson, was born. Both the Thompson and Bell families were related to the famous Lord Thomas Cruse, who was compelled to flee the country for his participation in the revolution of 1798. He sought an asylum in the United States, where he died soon after.  His mother, Martha Spaulding Thompson, was a daughter of Abel Spaulding, who served with distinction in the revolutionary war, and through her is a direct descendant of Aqulla Chase, who settled in Newberry, Mass., in 1640, and is therefore closely related to Bishop Philander Chase (1776-1852) and Salmon P. Chase (1908-1873), chief justice of the supreme court of the United States. 

He first attended school in a log schoolhouse in Ohio, where everything was of the rudest and most primitive character. His education was carefully superintended by his mother, who was a prominent educator of her time, to whom he went to school for several years. He came to Iowa in November, 1867, and settled in Clayton county, then a sparsely populated frontier county. The trip from Ohio was made in a covered wagon and consumed more than forty days. In the year 1869 he commenced the study of law under the tutorage of S. T. Woodward, of Elkader, while carrying on his regular farm work, and was admitted to the bar In May, 1873, and soon thereafter removed to his present location. In June of that year he opened the first law office Lyon county. He was actively engaged in practice until 1893, and was conspicuous in all the prominent cases litigated in that section.  His business was not confined to that county alone, but extended to adjoining counties, and his collections covered a radius of more then 100 miles.  He was council for the board of supervisors during the stirring period of the defalcation of the treasurer of the county, during the settlement of which scenes having the smack of life in the woolly west were enacted. In 1876 he formed a partnership with his brother, T. C. Thompson, and the same was continued until 1880, when it was dissolved by mutual consent. He organized the Lyon County bank in 1877 under the style of J. K. P. Thompson & Co. The bank was reorganized in 1889, and the capital increased to 125,000, with Hon. William Larrabee and others as special partners, and O. P.  Miller as general partner. The capital stock was increased from time to time until it reached its present amount, $100,000. Mr. Larrabee retired in 1893, the interest of the other special partners having been previously purchased by the general partners.

He enlisted August 18, 1862, as a musician in Company D, Twenty-first Iowa volunteers, and served throughout the war with as much distinction as comes to the average soldier. He was engaged in the following battles: Hartsville, the running of the blockade at Vicksburg, bombardment of Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, was in the forefront when the pickets were fired upon, Champion Hill, the charge at Black River Bridge, assault and siege of Vicksburg, when he was under fire for forty days and nights. He was severely wounded in the assault on the works of Vicksburg, and was at the time within a few feet of his commander, General McClennan. After the surrender of the city, he was sent to Jefferson barracks hospital, and rejoined his regiment at Matagorda Bay the February following. He also participated in the Mobile campaign, was in the siege and assault of Ft. Blakely and Spanish Fort, the surrender of Mobile and the capture of Kirby Smith, having taken part in seven hard-fought battles, and participated in the most noted campaign of this or any other age.

He is a charter member of Dunlap Post No. 147, Department of Iowa, G. A. R., which he was instrumental in having named after his lieutenant-colonel, who was killed while gallantly leading his command on the works of Vicksburg. He is past commander of his post, and past commander Department of Iowa, G. A. R., having served in that capacity during the years of 1896-6. He also served on the staff of Commander-ln-chief Vezy, and as aid of several commanders of Iowa. He was appointed lieutenant-colonel in the Iowa national guard on the staff of Governor Larrabee, again on that of Governor Jackson, and promoted to the rank of colonel by Governor Drake In February, 1896, which rank he now holds.

His father was an old-line democrat, but the son did not embrace the faith of the father. He cast his first vote for a republican, and has several times managed with consummate skill the campaigns of his county as chairman of the central committee.  He was elected recorder of the county in 1875, and held the office for one term, although he had been in actual charge of the office since 1873, and was at one time in charge of all the county offices. He was nominated for the office of representative by the republicans of the Seventieth district, and was defeated by Hon. William Barrett, the democratic nominee, by only a few votes. There were only thirty-three votes cast against him in his own county. He is a member of all the Masonic orders, past eminent commander, a member of the Knights of Pythias, and a Son of the American Revolution.  In nearly all of these orders he holds high official positions. He is a member of the Congregational church and a trustee of Iowa college. He was instrumental in establishing the Vicksburg National Military park, and has been a member of the provisional board of directors of the organization from the beginning.

He was married to Miss Celestia A. Fobes, at Elkader, Iowa, November 18, 1869, who is also of revolutionary ancestry; her great grandfather served with great valor in the revolutionary war.  They have three children, two daughters and one son: Lily Foster Thompson Parker, Leta May Thompson and Hoyt Fobes Thompson. They are all graduates of the Rock Rapids high School.  The older daughter was a student at Cornel1 college.  The second daughter graduated from Iowa college, where the son is now a student. He will soon enter Princeton.

Colonel Thompson has been closely identified with the development of northwestern Iowa, and especially with Lyon County, having become a resident thereof a few months after Its organization, and has borne a conspicuous part in its settlement. He bore evidence of his faith in its future oy large investments in her rich soil, and by tenaciously clinging thereto. The result more than justified his faith.

VAIL, Alexander M., M. D., of Rock Rapids, is a son of Alexander Vail, a hatter during his earlier years in the city of Newark, N. J. Following the election of Buchanan, however, he foresaw the possible destruction of the manufacturing industries of the east, and so, in 1857, removed to Illinois and settled on a farm near Kewanee, where he lived until 1865.  He died November 1, 1894, while visiting the doctor, at the advanced age of 90 years. The mother, Sarah Sebring Vail, was a woman whose life was one of great activity in the work of benevolence. She died at the age of 62. King George I of Great Britain granted a tract of land in the Orange mountains in New Jersey to the early ancestors of the Vails, and there several generations of the family passed their lives. Among the descendants of these was Judge Stephen Vail, of Patterson, N.  J., who was the father of Alfred Vail, said to be the originator of the Morse system of electric telegraphy. Little is known of the mother's antecedents except that they were natives of Holland.

Alexander M. Vail was born at Greenbrook, Summerset county, N. J., May 9, 1848. His educational advantages were limited; he attended country school during winter and by hard study evenings when engaged as a clerk at an early age. He started to learn the tinner's trade at 14, but was induced to abandon the idea by his mother, and entered the service of his brother, who owned a clothing store.  After four years in that capacity be made a tour of Kansas and Nebraska, but finding no place to his liking returned to Kewanee, 111. He went to Chicago shortly after the big fire, and from there to Red Oak, Iowa, where he was engaged for a time in clerking, but the company failed and he was thrown out of employment. After working at various places he, in 1877, took up the study of medical electricity and hydropathy.

In the fall of 1879 he went to Chicago and began a regular course in medicine and surgery. While there he assisted Dr.  L. G. McIntosh in perfecting the electric battery now known as the McIntosh battery, and by his practical genius aided in bringing out one of the best and most extensively used batteries now in use by physicians. He graduated from the Chicago Medical college in 1882. During his junior year he took second prize, consisting of a medal and a $10 gold piece, in an oral contest in anatomy, and the next year received a like prize for the best dissection.  Following graduation he engaged in practice in Red Oak, in partnership with Dr.  F. M. Hiett, where he remained one year; removed to Rock Rapids in 1884 and went into the drug business with Dr. A. McNab, practicing the while; sold out in 1887 and devoted his whole attention to practice.  While there he established a reputation in the treatment of diseases of women and children, and his success with tuberculosis by the iodine method, a discovery of his own, has attracted wide attention.

In 1886 he assisted in organizing the Medical Association of Northwestern Iowa, and in 1887 was delegated a member of the American Medical association, which then met in Chicago. In 1894 he succeeded in organizing the Lyon County Medical society. He is a member of the National Association of Railway Surgeons, and is local surgeon for the Illinois Central railway. He is a republican and prohibitionist, but regards the latter as a moral rather than a political question. He is a member of the I. O. O. F., and has filled most all the offices in his home lodge; was district deputy grand master for one year. He is highly prominent in the work of the M.  W. of A., having assisted in organizing one of the strongest lodges in any small town in the state. He was married to Miss Ida F. Burrough, of Tecumseh, Mich., September 8, 1886. They have no children.

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