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Caswell County Genealogy
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 1810 - 1885 (74 years)
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| Name |
Thompson, Jacob [1] |
| Birth |
15 May 1810 |
Leasburg, Caswell County, North Carolina  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Occupation |
Lawyer |
| Reference Number |
3921 |
| Death |
24 Mar 1885 |
Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee |
| Burial |
Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee |
| Person ID |
I3871 |
Caswell County |
| Last Modified |
23 Sep 2023 |
| Father |
Thompson, Nicholas, b. 20 Mar 1781 d. 28 Jul 1857 (Age 76 years) |
| Relationship |
natural |
| Mother |
Van Hook, Lucretia, b. 22 Feb 1788 d. 19 Mar 1858 (Age 70 years) |
| Relationship |
natural |
| Marriage |
5 May 1804 |
Leasburg, Caswell County, North Carolina |
| Reference Number |
29486 |
| Notes |
- The Heritage of Caswell County, North Carolina, Jeannine D. Whitlow, Editor (1985) at 530-531 (Article No. 721, "The Thompson Family")
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| Family ID |
F1272 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family |
Jones, Catherine Ann, b. 18 Dec 1822, Mississippi d. 25 Feb 1891, Oak Hill, Davidson County, Tennessee (Age 68 years) |
| Marriage |
18 Dec 1838 |
| Reference Number |
32980 |
| Children |
| + | 1. Thompson, Macon Caswell, b. 11 Nov 1839, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee d. 6 Jun 1873, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee (Age 33 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural] |
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| Family ID |
F2073 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
23 Sep 2023 |
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| Documents
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 | Jacob Thompson Raids from Canada
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 | Buchanan, Jane Gray. Thomas Thompson and Ann Finney of Colonial Pennsylvania and North Carolina: Lawrence, Closs, and John Thompson: Allied Lines of Finney, McAllister, Buchanan, and Hart. Oak Ridge (TN): J. G. Buchanan, 1987, p.71.
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 | Buchanan, Jane Gray. Thomas Thompson and Ann Finney of Colonial Pennsylvania and North Carolina: Lawrence, Closs, and John Thompson: Allied Lines of Finney, McAllister, Buchanan, and Hart. Oak Ridge (TN): J. G. Buchanan, 1987. pp. 72-73
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 | Buchanan, Jane Gray. Thomas Thompson and Ann Finney of Colonial Pennsylvania and North Carolina: Lawrence, Closs, and John Thompson: Allied Lines of Finney, McAllister, Buchanan, and Hart. Oak Ridge (TN): J. G. Buchanan, 1987, p. 74
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 | Buchanan, Jane Gray. Thomas Thompson and Ann Finney of Colonial Pennsylvania and North Carolina: Lawrence, Closs, and John Thompson: Allied Lines of Finney, McAllister, Buchanan, and Hart. Oak Ridge (TN): J. G. Buchanan, 1987, pp. 75-76
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| Notes |
- Jacob Thompson (1810-1885)
Portrait of Jacob Thompson.
(for larger image, click on photograph)
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Buchanan Cabinet. Far Left-Jacob Thompson
Photograph shows President Buchanan standing, surrounded by his Cabinet including Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior (far left); Lewis Cass, Secretary of State; Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury; Jeremiah Black, Attorney General; Horatio King, Postmaster General; John B. Floyd, Secretary of War and Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy.
Date Created/Published: [between 1857 and 1861]
Text of the Above Mississippi Historical Marker
Jacob Thompson "Home Place" Historical Marker, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 2003.
The mansion ca. 1853 located on this site was burned by Union troops in 1864. Two original outbuildings are included in the present house, built in 1869. Jacob Thompson (1810-1885), a native of North Carolina, moved to Pontotoc, Mississippi, in 1835. A lawyer and Democrat, he was active in politics and helped organize circuit courts in a number of northern Mississippi counties. He married Catharine Ann Jones in 1838. In addition to his law practice in Pontotoc, Panola and Oxford, Thompson was a cotton grower, U.S. Congressman (1839-1857), University of Mississippi trustee (1844-1857) and U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1857-1861). He resigned his post the day before Mississippi seceded and served in the C.S. Army and in the state legislature. Thompson headed the controversial Confederate Commission to Canada 1864-1865. As such, he was falsely charged with a number of crimes, including a role in Lincoln's assassination. Living in exile abroad until 1869, he was granted amnesty and briefly returned to Oxford before moving to Memphis, where he was a businessman. He and his wife are buried in Elmwood Cemetery.
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Jacob Thompson, cabinet officer, was born in Leasburg, Caswell County, North Carolina, 15 May 1810. He was graduated from the University of North Carolina (A.B., 1831); was a tutor at the University, 1831-33; was admitted to the bar, 1834, and began practice in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. He was a Democratic representative from Mississippi in the 26th-31st US Congresses, 1839-51, declining reelection. While in congress he served several times as chairman of the committee on Indian affairs; was influential in securing the repudiation of the state bonds, 1842; voted against the compromise of 1850, and in 1845 declined an appointment by Governor Albert G. Brown of Mississippi to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate caused by the resignation of Robert J. Walker. He was Secretary of the Interior in President Buchanan's cabinet from 5 March 1857 to 8 January 1861, when he resigned; was appointed a commissioner to promote the secession of North Carolina in December, 1860; served as Inspector-General of the Confederate Army, and was Governor of Mississippi, 1862-64, subsequently acting as aide-de-camp to General Beauregard. He was confidential agent [spy] of the Confederacy to Canada, 1864-65, where he unsuccessfully endeavored to carry out a scheme for releasing the prisoners at Camp Douglas, Chicago, and burning the city. He died in Memphis, Tennessee, 24 March 1885. Source: Ancestry.com. Biographies of Notable Americans, 1904 [database online]. Orem, UT: MyFamily.com, Inc., 1997
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Thus, Jacob Thompson lived in North Carolina for the first twenty-five years of his life. Note that he named his only son Caswell. Served twelve years as a US Congressman from Mississippi and was Secretary of the Interior in President James Buchanan's cabinet.
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Some historians believe Leasburg's (Caswell County, North Carolina) Jacob Thompson (1810-1885) wasted his many talents by supporting the south in the Civil War. Thompson, a lawyer, graduated from the University of North Carolina, and was Secretary of the Interior in the administration of US President James Buchanan.
Semi-Weekly Standard (Raleigh, NC), 21 Mar 1857
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Caswell County History: Jacob Thompson (1810-1885)
On August 19, 1840, a "dinner" [commenced at noon] was held at the Milton Hotel (Milton, Caswell County, North Carolina), to honor Jacob Thompson. A Caswell County native (born in Leasburg), Thompson had moved to Mississippi and was serving in the United States Congress. Newspaper reports of the day stated:
"In passing the Gate into the enclosure at the West end of the Milton Hotel, the eye was directed to . . . four large tables, each 52 feet in length, nicely arranged and tastefully spread with a rich supply of the most choice meats, vegetables and trimmings, the plentiful [sic] country affords . . . . The clattering of knives and forks and the bustle of genteel servants passing and running to and fro, each ambitious to excel in the discharge of his duty soon told that nearly every plate was occupied."
Among the dignitaries on hand to honor Jacob Thompson: US Senator Bedford Brown, General Barzillai Graves, Major William A. Lea, Stephen Dodson, Jeremiah Graves, Dr. David Pointer (of mad/snakes stone fame), Dabney Rainey, Major John R. Graves, Colonel H. Stanfield, Dr. Nathaniel S. L. Graves, Thomas J. Reid, Major H. Graves, Thomas Hart Benton, James Murphey, Richard Yarbrough, Captain William P. Womack, William K. Harrison, Colonel Paul Taylor, and Thomas Donoho.
The Weekly Standard (Raleigh, North Carolina), 9 September 1840.
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Headquarters Post Camp Douglas
Chicago, Ill., November 26, 1864.
Brig. Gen. H. W. Wessells,
Inspector and Commissary General of Prisoners, Washington, D.C.:
General: Herewith I have the honor to transmit my report of the origin, process, and result thus far of the two rebel raids organized by Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, in Canada, for the purpose of releasing the prisoners of war at Camp Douglas and co-operating with the Sons of Liberty to inaugurate revolution in the States of Illinois and Indiana.
It can be proved by the prisoner John Mongham, mentioned in the report, and another witness equally intelligent, both of whom have been connected with him in these affairs, that Jacob Thompson organized these expeditions and furnished money to pay expenses. Mr. Thompson still remains in Canada plotting against the peace and safety of our Northern cities and communities and planning injurious enterprises against us of a character, and conducted in a manner unknown to the laws of war. The proof against him is positive and accessible. In view of these facts I respectfully suggest whether the Government of the United States has not a right to demand the person of Mr. Jacob Thompson from the Canadian authorities.
I have the honor to be, general, your obedient servant.
B. J. Sweet,
Colonel Eighth Regiment Veteran Reserve Corps, Comdg. Post.
Source: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies 1861-1865, Series I: Formal Reports. National Archives and Records Administration.
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Sources:
The Heritage of Caswell County, North Carolina, Jeannine D. Whitlow, Editor (1985) at 530-531 (Article No. 721, "The Thompson Family").
The Heritage of Caswell County, North Carolina, Jeannine D. Whitlow, Editor (1985) at 533 (Article No. 725, "Jacob Thompson").
Mississippi, As a Province, Territory, and State: With Biographical Notices of Eminent Citizens, Volume I, J. F. H. Claiborne (1880).
Sketches of Prominent Tennesseans: Biographies and Records of Many of the Families Who Have Attained Prominence in Tennessee, Honoroable William S. Speer, Compiler and Editor (1888; reprinted with new material 1978).
Haggart, Greg and Haggart, Nancy. Pirates of the Great Lakes. Lulu: 2008.
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Thompson, Jacob, a Representative from Mississippi; born in Leasburg, Caswell County, N.C., May 15, 1810; attended the public schools and Bingham Academy in Orange County; was graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1831; member of the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1831 and 1832; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1834 and commenced practice in Pontotoc, Miss., in 1835; elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-sixth and to the five succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1839-March 3, 1851); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1850 to the Thirty-second Congress; declined an appointment to the United States Senate tendered by Governor Brown in 1845; appointed Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of President Buchanan and served from March 6, 1857, to January 8, 1861, when he resigned; served as inspector general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; confidential agent of the Confederacy to Canada in 1864 and 1865; traveled throughout Europe in 1866 and 1867; settled in Memphis, Tenn., in 1868 and managed the affairs of his extensive holdings; died in Memphis, Tenn., March 24, 1885; interment in Elmwood Cemetery.
Source: U.S. Congress, Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1949 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), p.1913.
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Line of Descent:
Guillaume Vigne and Adrienne Cuvellier
Rachel Vigne and Cornelius Van Tienhoven
Lucas Van Tienhoven and Tryntje Bording
Sara Van Tienhoven and Jacob Balck
Katherine Balck and Aaron Van Hook (a Fulkerson forebear)
David Van Hook and Lucy Bumpass
Jacob Van Hook, Sr. and Nancy Jones
Lucretia Van Hook and Nicholas Thompson
Jacob Thompson
Source: Jacob Thompson Ancestry [no longer available online: http://www.fulkerson.org/thompson.html]
My great grandfather, Lt. James Robb Griffin, 1st Reg. Louisiana Cavalry CSA, Avoyelles Parrish, Lousiana, fought from 1861 until taken prisoner in Kentucky, 1 August 1863. He was held in Johnston Island prison until June 1, 1865. Years later he wrote five articles for a Houston newspaper. I have three of the articles, which were used in his wife's CSA pension application. One was about Jacob Thompson, and the wild furor stirred up by the rumor that Jacob Thompson had organized a force, with ships, to invade the island and release the Confederate officers. Quite a few military and civilian US forces were pinned down because of their fear of Thompson. After the assination of President Lincoln, they arrested and imprisoned men without any connection to the murder, other that they were prominant. The father of James Robb Griffin, William Franklyn Griffin, Lt.Gov/Gen. CSA's, Lousiana, was connected to the Mississippi Griffins, and the line of James K. Lea of Caswell County and his second wife, Margaret Delphy Sargent, who was sister of Agnes Ware Sargent, through his daughter's (Daisy Mable Griffin), marriage to the son of Josiah Asbury Stanfield, John Lawson Stanfield of Leasburg. Source: Caswell County History and Genealogy Yahoo Group (Message #149, 19 March 2008: Jacob Thompson (1810-1885) by Betty Fitzgerald [fitzgeraldbetty2@yahoo.com]).
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The following is based upon local Caswell County knowledge and the session minutes and baptismal records of the Milton Presbyterian Church (Caswell County, North Carolina):
The father of Jacob Thompson (1810-1885), Nicholas Thompson (1781-1857), wanted Jacob to be a Presbyterian minister. Accordingly, Jacob joined the Milton Presbyterian Church July 10, 1831, and "Dr. Caldwell baptized his pupil." Presumably, this was Dr. David Caldwell, President of the University of North Carolina. Later, when Jacob Thompson moved to Mississippi, the following appears in the Milton Presbyterian Church session minutes:
"6/8/1835 Letter from Mr. J. Thomson [Jacob Thompson] requesting letter of dismission to where he might settle in Alabama."
The birth date and the names of the parents in the Milton Presbyterian Church baptismal records provide evidence that this is the Jacob Thompson of Leasburg, Caswell County, North Carolina, who became Secretary of the Interior in President Buchanan’s cabinet. Jacob Thompson Bradsher (1893-1983), a member and elder of the Milton Presbyterian Church, was named for a nephew of Jacob Thompson. The nephew, Dr. Jacob A. Thompson, M.D., had his practice in Leasburg, Caswell County, North Carolina. The grandmother of Jacob Thompson Bradsher, Katherine Jones Thompson, was the sister of Dr. Jacob A. Thompson, M.D.
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Jacob Thompson (American National Biography)
Modern Scholarship
Thompson began the most controversial part of his Confederate career in the spring of 1864. He and Clement Claiborne Clay, a former U.S. Senator from Alabama, were sent by Davis as special Confederate agents to Canada. The purpose of the mission, as explained by Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin, was to provoke a "disruption between the Eastern and Western States in the approaching election at the North." Supplied with a war chest of $300,000, Thompson was to do all in his power to demoralize the Union home front. The most grandiose of his efforts aimed at liberating Confederate soldiers from Union prison camps around the Great Lakes and instigating an uprising of disaffected Democrats in the Midwest that would culminate in the creation of a separate northwestern Confederacy. Little came of these…. Much of his money, as he detailed in a report of 3 December 1864, was used to hire arsonists to destroy property in northern cities. He explained that his goal was "to burn whenever it is practicable, and thus make the men of property feel their insecurity and tire them out with the war." The most spectacular example of this strategy occurred on 25 November 1864, when hired Confederate agents set fires at several hotels and buildings in New York City. The fires were extinguished with relatively little damage, but Thompson by now was a target of northern vengeance. He was blamed, wrongfully according to his account, for ordering the Confederate raid on St. Albans, Vermont…
William L. Barney, "Thompson, Jacob," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00986.html.
Novelist William Faulkner used Jacob Thompson as the basis of a character, Jason Compson, in The Sound and the Fury (1929).
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The late Jacob Thompson, out of respect to whose memory the interior department was closed yesterday, was not of Kentucky, as reported by the Associated Press, but of Mississippi. He was best known to the country as secretary of the interior under President Buchanan. Born in Caswell County, North Carolina, May 15, 1810, he was admitted to the bar in 1834, and settled in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, in 1835. He became a member of Congress in 1839, and remained such till 1851. As chairman of the committee on Indian affairs he showed great industry and application, and, with other representatives of his State, opposed the compromise measures of 1851. His secretaryship of the interior he resigned January 7, 1861,in consequence of the order to reinforce Fort Sumter. He was governor of Mississippi 1862-1864, and subsequently aide-de-camp to General Beauregard, inspector-general for the department of Mississippi and went abroad on a sort of financial and diplomatic mission for the Confederate government.
Source: The Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas), 27 March 1885.
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Jacob Thompson
ID: G-71
Location: US 158 at Leasburg
County: Caswell
Original Date Cast: 1959-P
Text: JACOB THOMPSON Secretary of Interior, 1857-1861, Confederate secret agent in Canada, U.S. Representative from Mississippi. Birthplace stands 100 yds. southeast.
Essay:
Jacob Thompson played a little remembered role in the Civil War. Appointed a Confederate ambassador to Canada, he operated a spy network and helped orchestrate several failed schemes to attack the United States from across the Great Lakes.
The son of Nicholas and Lucretia Van Hook Thompson, he was born on May 15, 1810, in Leasburg. In 1831 he graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina and subsequently read law with Judge John M. Dick of Greensboro. Admitted to the bar in 1835, Thompson decided to settle with his brother, Dr. James Young Thompson, in Pontotoc, Mississippi. He later moved to Oxford, Mississippi, and married Catherine Jones.
In 1837, Thompson failed in a bid for attorney general of Mississippi, but was elected to the United States Congress, where he served as chairman of the Public Lands and Indian Affairs committees from March 4, 1839, until March 3, 1851. In 1857 President James Buchanan appointed Thompson the Secretary of the Interior, a post he held until 1861 when he resigned upon learning that the Star of the West was sent to Fort Sumter.
Thompson entered the Confederate army, and although never formally a member of any regiment, he accepted a commission as a lieutenant colonel and operated as an aide-de-camp, first to Gen. Pierre Beauregard at the Battle of Shiloh and then as inspector general for Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton during the Vicksburg Campaign. He also became the inspiration for one Confederate unit, Company K, 19th Mississippi Infantry, known as the "Jake Thompson Guards."
Elected to the Mississippi legislature in 1863, he was sent the following year to Canada by the Confederate government as a secret agent. He cooperated with the "Sons of Liberty," a organization of Copperheads in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois sympathetic to the South in an effort to release Confederate prisoners held near the Great Lakes. Thompson also encouraged a plan to burn several northern cities including New York. He was charged with complicity in Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, and after the war lived in Canada and Europe.
Thompson returned to the south in 1868, settling near Memphis, Tennessee. In 1876 he was sued for sums stolen from the Indian funds in the Department of the Interior during his administration but a Congressional committee found him innocent. He died at his home in Tennessee in 1885. Novelist William Faulkner used Thompson for the basis of a character, Jason Compson, in The Sound and the Fury.
References:
J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, I (1880)
P. G. Auchampaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet (1926)
J. F. Bivins, "Life and Character of Jacob Thompson," Publications of the Historical Society of Trinity College, 2nd series (1898)
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
(Roxboro, N.C.) Courier-Times, November 19, 1964
William A. Tidwell, April 1965: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (1995)
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"Hon. Jacob Thompson, of Leasburg (Caswell County) owns an estate in Memphis, Tenn., valued at a quarter of a million dollars. He graduated at the N.C. University in 1831. Immediately after the close of the war he left this country for England in company with Hon. J. P. Benjamin. At one time he was a U.S. Senator from Mississippi, and is now a prominent politician in Memphis."
The Torchlight (Oxford, NC), 2 March 1880.
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Buchanan, Jane Gray. Thomas Thompson and Ann Finney of Colonial Pennsylvania and North Carolina: Lawrence, Closs, and John Thompson: Allied Lines of Finney, McAllister, Buchanan, and Hart. Oak Ridge (TN): J. G. Buchanan, 1987.
I have recently had several additional copies printed of my book, Thomas Thompson and Ann Finney of Colonial Pennsylvania and North Carolina, originally published in 1987.
Unavailable, but still in demand for many years, it now can be ordered from me in Nashville, TN where I moved in 2012. Price: $60, postage included.
I can be contacted by email or by phone: 615-460-1143.
Jane Gray Buchanan (buchananjg@aol.com) 8 September 2020
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Was Caswell County's Jacob Thompson a Traitor
When serving as US Secretary of Interior Jacob Thompson was appointed by the State of Mississippi as a "secession commissioner" to North Carolina with the task of convincing that state to secede from the Union after Abraham Lincoln had been elected US President.
Thompson met with North Carolina Governor John W. Ellis in Raleigh. Thompson also wrote an open letter to Ellis that was published in the "Raleigh State Journal" December 20, 1860. In that letter Thompson stated the South faced "common humiliation and ruin" if it remained in the Union. He warned a Northern "majority trained from infancy to hate our people and their institutions" would overthrow slavery. The result would be "the subjugation of our people."
New-York Daily Tribune, January 9, 1861, p. 4.
Jacob Thompson (1810-1885), born in Leasburg, Caswell County, North Carolina.
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Civil War
Many historians are "fascinated" by the United States Civil War. They can name chapter and verse about the various battles.
However, I am equally interested in the years leading to that conflict.
In 1859, the President of the United States, James Buchanan, came to North Carolina. He visited several North Carolina locations, but ended his trip in Chapel Hill for commencement exercises at the University of North Carolina. He was accompanied by Caswell County's (Leasburg's) Jacob Thompson (then Secretary of the Interior), a graduate of the University.
The Weekly Standard (Raleigh, NC), 8 June 1859.
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1860 United States Federal Census
Name: Jacob Thompson
Age in 1860: 50
Birth Year: abt 1810
Birthplace: North Carolina
Home in 1860: Lafayette, Mississippi
Gender: Male
Post Office: Paris
Household Members: Name Age
Jacob Thompson 50
Catherine Thompson 40
Susan Kozs 17
Lucy Jones 12
William Jones 9
1880 United States Federal Census
Name: Jacob Thompson
Home in 1880: Memphis, Shelby, Tennessee
Age: 69
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1811
Birthplace: North Carolina
Relation to Head of Household: Self (Head)
Spouse's Name: Mrs. Jacob Thompson
Father's birthplace: North Carolina
Mother's birthplace: North Carolina
Occupation: Retired Lawyer
Marital Status: Married
Race: White
Gender: Male
Household Members: Name Age
Jacob Thompson 69
Mrs. Jacob Thompson 57
Laura Poindexter 25
Lou Poindexter 6
U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925
Name: Jacob Thompson
Birth Date: 10 May 1810
Birth Place: North Carolina
Age: 71
Passport Issue Date: 6 Jun 1881
Passport Includes a Photo:
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| Sources |
- Details: The Heritage of Caswell County, North Carolina, Jeannine D. Whitlow, Editor (1985) at 541-542 (Article #738 "The Van Hook Family" by Bernard C. Calvert).
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