Homer Thompson

GROSSCUP, THOMPSON, WARREN

Posted By: Kent Transier (email)
Date: 1/6/2010 at 16:23:56

A Memorial and Biographical Record of Iowa
Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1896

Homer Thompson, of the firm of Thompson & Strong, editors and proprietors of the semi-weekly Madisonian, of Winterset, Iowa, is a gentleman well known in this city and county, and it is eminently fitting that we here make biographical reference to him. A brief sketch of his life is as follows.

Homer Thompson was born in the vicinity of Delaware, in Delaware county, Ohio, October 22, 1849. He is a son of John W. and Isabella (Warren) Thompson. His father was a native of Pennsylvania, born in Westmoreland county, and when quite young removed with his parents to Wayne county, Ohio, and soon afterward to Delaware county, that State, where he continued to reside until 1856, That year the family came west and located upon a farm in Douglas township, Madison county, Iowa. Here the father died in 1873. The mother survived him until 1892, when her death occurred, in Kansas. The Thompsons trace their ancestral line back to Scotch-Irish origin. The great-grandfathers of our subject were born in Ireland.

At the time John W. Thompson removed with his family to Iowa his son Homer was seven years of age, and on their frontier farm young Homer spent his boyhood days, at first attending the district school and later the Winterset high school. After leaving the high school he was for a time a student at Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa, and finally he returned to Ohio and entered the Ohio Wesleyan University, at Delaware, where he completed a course and graduated in 1876.

Immediately following his graduation he taught school for a while in Ohio. Returning to Winterset, he read law and taught school at intervals, for two years being principal of the Earlham school, and after this became interested in the Madisonian, in the publication of which he was associated with the Hon. Henry J. B. Cummings and Henry Wallace.

In 1888 he and Mr. Albert Strong bought out Colonel Cummings’ and Mr. Wallace’s interests, and they have since continued the publication of this paper. Until April, 1895, it was issued weekly, but since that date has been published twice a week. The Madisonian us a six-column quarto, Republican in politics, and neatly and well printed, and has a good circulation. This paper is entitled to distinction as being the oldest in the county, having been established in 1856 by James Iler. At that time it was called the Iowa Pilot, and some time later changed to its present style.

Mr. Thompson was married in 1885 to Miss Jessie Grosscup, a native of Ohio, who came with her parents too Madison county, Iowa, about 1876.