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BIOGRAPHICAL AND PORTRAIT CYCLOPEDIA

the wife of Hugh Thompson, the first son of Robert Thompson, above mentioned. This Hugh Thompson and his wife Martha (nee Thomson) were the parents of nine children: Mary, Jane, Joseph, James, Robert, John, William, Hugh and Samuel.     In 1793 Hugh Thompson and wife, Martha, with their first-born babe, Mary, attempted to settle on land on Thompson's run, about one mile above what is now Kellysburg, Indiana county, and eleven miles north of the present town on Indiana, in what is now Rayne township. This start in life in the howling wilderness was interrupted by the unfriendly Indian, and they soon returned to Derry township, where they remained until after the defeat of the Indian forces by Gen. Wayne in the Ohio campaign in the month of August, 1794. Peace followed, and in the spring of 1795 the family, now increased by another daughter (Jane), came out once more and safely settled on the same land that the hostilities of the Indian had driven them from before. This time Robert Thompson, the father of Hugh, with his wife and five other children, came along and settled on a portion of the same tract of land. Martha, Robert Thompson's second child, and Hugh's sister, was now the wife of one Hugh Cannon. The family was now permanently settled, and to this day the fine farms which they carved out of the forest are known as the "Old Thompson Homestead,"     Of these old original Thompsons, Robert, the father of them all, died on the old place on October 13, 1809, and his wife, Mary, on January 15, 1815. Hugh, their son, died on June 13, 1829, and Martha, his wife, on September 10, 1848. All are buried in the Gilgal Presbyterian graveyard, four miles north of the "Old Homestead." All were members of the Gilgal church.

Hugh Thompson and Martha, his wife (nee Thomson), were the grandparents of James M. Thompson, of Ebensburg, the subject of this sketch, and their sixth child, John, was his father.     Major John Thompson, as he later in life came to be known, was born on the "Old Homestead" June 1, 1804, and died in Ebensburg on December 5, 1879. He was reared and received his education in the old subscription schools of this boyhood days. On leaving school he began life on his own account in the mercantile business, and was later, for a number of years, landlord of the "Cambria House" and the "Mountain House," at Ebensburg, and was postmaster at the same place for fifteen years. On March 24, 1830, he married Miss Ellen Patton, and their union resulted in the birth of the following children: Joseph, Benjamin, Mary, Ellen, Amelia, James, John, Robert and Rose.     James M. Thompson received his education in the common schools of Ebensburg, and on leaving school accepted a position as traveling salesman for a clothing house in Philadelphia. He remained in their employ from 1857 to 1859, when he resigned his position and accepted another with the wholesale Philadelphia tobacco house of Wardell & Stephenson, remaining with them until 1862, when he enlisted as a soldier in the Union army, in company F, One Hundred and Thirty-Third regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers infantry, and served for ten months. He participated in the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, before Maye's Heights, in front of the historical "Stone Wall," and Chancellorsville, in which fourteen of his company were killed, fifteen were wounded and two made prisoners. Among the killed were his captain and first lieutenant.

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