Electious Thompson
MSA SC 3520-17879
Biography:
Electious Thompson enlisted as a private in Maryland's Fifth Independent Company, led by Captain John Allen Thomas, in early 1776. He served in the army for about a year, seeing service in the ferocious fighting around New York. After he left the army, he was a Baptist minister, traveling frequently throughout the South, establishing new churches.
Thompson was a native of St. Mary's County, Maryland, and was born in either 1750 or 1755. His father, James Thompson, died when Electious was quite young, killed in combat at Fort Ligonier in Western Pennsylvania on October 12, 1758, while serving as a soldier in the French and Indian War. Electious's mother was Grace (Hayden) Thompson, who had previously been married to Matthew Herbert. She herself died in the middle of 1760, less than two years after her husband, leaving Electious an orphan, along with his siblings and half-siblings Elizabeth Thompson, Susannah Thompson, and Matthew Herbert. Electious was put in the care of his uncle Robert Thompson, who apprenticed him on board a ship. When he joined the army, Electious enlisted with his young first cousin Charles Thompson. Charles was Robert's son, and he and Electious may have been virtually brothers. [1]
The Fifth Independent Company was raised in St. Mary's County, Maryland, and was one of seven independent companies that the Maryland Council of Safety formed across the state in early 1776, initially intended to guard the Chesapeake Bay's coastline from a feared British invasion. By that summer, however, the independent companies were dispatched to New York, to help reinforce the Continental Army as it prepared to defend the city from the British. In total, twelve companies of Maryland troops traveled to New York that July and August: nine companies that comprised the First Maryland Regiment, commanded by Colonel William Smallwood, and the Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Independent companies, the only three that were ready to travel then. [2]
On August 27, 1776, the Americans faced the British Army at the Battle of Brooklyn (sometimes called the Battle of Long Island), the first full-scale engagement of the war. The battle was a rout: the British were able to sneak around the American lines, and the outflanked Americans fled in disarray. During the retreat, the Maryland troops fought their way towards the American fortifications, but were blocked by the swampy Gowanus Creek. While half the regiment was able to cross the creek, the rest were unable to do so before they were attacked by the British. Facing down a much larger, better-trained force, the Marylanders mounted a series of daring charges. These men, now known as the "Maryland 400," held the British at bay long enough for the rest of the Continental Army to escape, at the cost of many lives. In all, 256 Marylanders were killed or captured by the British; some companies lost as much as 80 percent of their men. Thompson and his company likely saw little combat that day. Instead, the Fifth Independent Company did not cross the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn until after the fighting had begun, and did not venture into the field of battle. They did, however, perform valuable service assisting the Americans retreating through the Gowanus Marsh. [3]
During the fall of 1776, Thompson and the rest of the Marylanders fought a series of battles in New York: Harlem Heights (September), White Plains (October), and Fort Washington (November). While the Americans had some tactical successes at these engagements, by November they had been pushed out of New York entirely, though they secured key revitalizing victories at Trenton and Princeton late that winter. While Thompson was with the army for most of the fall, he fell sick sometime in November or December. As he later recalled, "I was taken to the hospital in Philadelphia, where I remained until sometime near Christmas of that year and from Philadelphia I got [brought] to Annapolis...at which place I lay sick until sometime in January." [4]
By the time he was finally released from the hospital and able to return to St. Mary's County, Thompson's enlistment had ended, and all of the independent companies had been disbanded. A number of men from the independents returned to the army in the early part of 1777, joining the newly-formed Second Maryland Regiment, but Thompson did not, possibly because of his health. However, that fall he returned to the battlefield once again. The British army was threatening the American capital at Philadelphia, and a number of militia units from Maryland and other states were called into active duty. Thompson signed on with a militia company from Prince George's County, serving as a substitute for another man who had been drafted into service. [5]
That September, the militia forces marched to Pennsylvania, probably arriving not long after the British captured Philadelphia on September 24. Thompson was one of many Maryland militia soldiers who took part in the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777, where he fought alongside some of the men he had served with in 1776. The battle as an attempt by the Americans to gain a position to re-take Philadelphia, but they were resoundingly defeated, in part because of the poor performance of the militia units, which were ill-suited and unprepared for combat. The British held Philadelphia until June 1778, when they withdrew. Thompson's militia company remained on active duty until December 1777, when they returned to Maryland and were discharged. [6]
Returning to Prince George's County, Thompson married Elizabeth Alexander in August 1780, with whom he six children: Philip, Eli, Ephraim, Polly, Alfred, and Electious. In the years that followed, the family moved frequently. While Electious was born Roman Catholic he became a Baptist, and he traveled throughout the South as a minister. In the early 1780s, the family lived in Maryland and nearby Loudoun County, Virginia, then moved to Caswell County, North Carolina in the second half of the decade. By the 1790s, they had relocated further south, in Montgomery County, North Carolina. The Thompsons lived in Lee County, in the southwestern corner of Virginia approximately 1804-1809, then traveled to nearby Floyd County, Kentucky by 1810. [7]
Around 1818, Electious and his family settled in Alabama, first in Montgomery County, then in Morgan County by 1821. Just as he had elsewhere, Thompson worked to spread his faith in Alabama. He helped to found at least two churches in the state: Bethel Baptist Church and Elim Baptist Church, both in Montgomery County. In January 1826, Thompson married his second wife, Martha Holley; when his first wife Elizabeth died is not known. Martha was herself a widow, and her first husband, Francis Holley, had been a Revolutionary War soldier from North Carolina. Martha had eight children with Francis before he died in 1807. [8]
In 1832, when he was in his seventies, Thompson applied for a pension from the Federal government as a Revolutionary War veteran. For his service during the war, Thompson was granted fifty dollars per year, which he received until his death on December 30, 1840. His wife Martha survived him by at least two years, but her date of death is not known. [9]
Owen Lourie, 2018. Additional research generously provided by Linda Thompson Jonas.
Sources:
[1] Some sources say that Thompson was born in 1750. In the 1830s, he claimed in his application for a veteran's pension that he was born in 1755. Pension of Electious Thompson, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, S 32017, from Fold3.com. Maryland Gazette, 2 November 1758; "French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops, 1757-1759," Maryland Historical Magazine 5, no. 3 (Sep. 1910), 287; Inventory of James Thompson, 1759, Prerogative Court, Inventories, Liber 66, p. 238 [MSA S534-67, 1/12/1/11]; Account of James Thompson, 1759, Prerogative Court, Accounts, Liber 43, p. 301 [MSA S531-43, 1/11/4/3]; Will of Grace Thompson, 1760, Prerogative Court, Wills, Liber 31, p. 2 [MSA S538-46, 1/11/1/40]; Inventory of Grace Thompson, 1760, Prerogative Court, Inventories, Liber 76, p. 317 [MSA S534-77, 1/12/1/21]; Account of Grace Thompson, 1763, Prerogative Court, Accounts, Liber 49, 611 [MSA S531-49, 1/11/4/9]. Many thanks to Linda Thompson Jonas for generously sharing her detailed research about the Thompson family and explaining the probate records and DNA evidence which shows that Electious was the son of James and Grace, and also demonstrating that Charles and Electious Thompson were cousins. See "Finding the Father of Electious Thompson" and "Breaking Through Brick Walls with Y-DNA" on her blog, The Ultimate Family Historians.
[2] Mark Andrew Tacyn "'To the End:' The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution" (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 33-45.
[3] Return of the Maryland troops, 13 September 1776, Revolutionary War Rolls, NARA M246, folder 35, p. 85, from Fold3.com; Tacyn, 48-73; Reiman Steuart, The Maryland Line (The Society of the Cincinnati, 1971), 154-155. For more on the experience of the Marylanders at the Battle of Brooklyn, see "In Their Own Words," on the Maryland State Archives research blog, Finding the Maryland 400.
[4] Thompson pension.
[5] Thompson pension.
[6] Thompson pension. The company that Thompson joined cannot be identified from the information in his pension file, and he does not appear on any muster rolls, which is not unusual. Many militia service records have not survived.
[7] Governor and Council, Oaths of Fidelity, 1778, Prince George's County, box 4, folder 18.1, p. 12, MdHR 4648-18 [MSA S963-17, 1/1/4/29]; Prince George's County Court, Marriage Licenses, 1777-1797, p. 13 [MSA CM783-1, CR 50230]; Thompson pension; General Assembly House of Delegates, Assessment Record, 1783, Anne Arundel County, Middle Neck Hundred, p. 2 [MSA S1161-1-9, 1/4/5/44]; Administration Account of Electious Thompson, 1852, Morgan County, Alabama, Orphan's Court, Book 10, p. 109; Alvaretta Kenan Register, comp., State Census of North Carolina 1784-1787 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1973), 19; U.S. Federal Census, 1800, Montgomery County, North Carolina; Lee County, Virginia Tax Records, Personal Property; U.S. Federal Census, 1810, Floyd County, Kentucky.
[8] U.S. Federal Census, 1830, Morgan County, Alabama; Thompson pension; Pension of Francis Holley (Martha Holley/Thompson), National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, R 10549, from Fold3.com; Huntsville Democrat (Alabama), 17 July 1841; Gary P. Burton, "Electious Thompson (1750-1840), Revolutionary War Soldier and Church Planter in Central Alabama," Pintlala Historical Association 21, no. 3 (Jul. 2007), 3-6
[9] U.S. Federal Census, 1830, Morgan County, Alabama; Thompson pension; Holley pension; FindaGrave for Elesctious [sic] Thompson; Huntsville Democrat (Alabama), 17 July 1841.
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