John Thompson

When he enlisted in 1799, John Thompson, gave only “Northampton” as his place of residence. No information is provided in Capt. Amos Stoddard‘s artillery company books other than his occupation was that of laborer. Fortunately, the journals and other documents provide more insight into the man’s life.^[1]Company Book of Amos Stoddard’s Artillery Company, Louisiana Territory Collection, Military Command Records, Adjutant’s Records, 1803–1805, Missouri State Historical Society Archives, St. … Continue reading

Early in July 1805, when several men were ill at once, the captains decided that improper cooking and care of utensils was the culprit. (It probably was, in part, but they had no scientific knowledge of the germs invading nicks and cuts while the men spent much of each day in the Missouri River.) They assigned a cook for each mess, naming Thompson for Sgt. Charles Floyd‘s (later Patrick Gass‘s). He was replaced by Peter Weiser on 12 August 1805. Being a cook included using fresh meat and rations promptly and cooking them for maximum nutrition and cleaning the utensils, but the cooks were in turn exempted “. . . from guard duty[,] . . . pitching the tents of the mess, collecting firewood, and forks poles &c. for cooking and drying such fresh meat as may be furnished them.”^[2]Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001), 2:357.

On the Clearwater River in future Idaho, 8 October 1805, the canoe that Sgt. Patrick Gass was steering split open and took on water. Its passengers, including Thompson, clung to the boat before it sank. Clark wrote, “one man Tompson a little hurt, every thing wet perticularly the greater part of our Small Stock of merchindize.” The Corps encamped for two days to dry out the goods, allowing Thompson to heal a bit.

At Fort Clatsop, Thompson went out with several elk-hunting parties, specifically on 1 March 1806, to jerk meat in the field—nearly essential in that damp climate. He was in Clark’s small party that explored up the Willamette River on 2 April 1806.

On the night of 11 April 1806, when three Watlala Chinook men took Lewis’s dog Seaman from camp, “they also stole an ax from us, but scarcely had it in their possession before Thompson detected them and wrest it from them.” The ax-taker was foiled in camp; Seaman’s rescuers went unnamed.

In 1807, Thompson was a signer of a petition to Congress in which eight former expedition members asked that they be allowed to choose their 320-acre land allotments in Indiana and Missouri. That places him in St. Louis in the early spring of 1807, and not on a fur-trading expedition to the far northwest as has been speculated.^[3]Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 151; 218 note 14. Jackson, Letters, 2:278-80. He may have been married to wife Peggy by then. The next record of John B. Thompson is the July 1815 notice from Peggy as administrator of his estate. Clark listed him as having been “killed” by 1825-1828.^[4]Jackson, 638.