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This article is from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 volumes, edited by William S. Powell. Copyright ©1979-1996 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

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Thomson, John W.

by R. H. Detrick, 1996

1811–6 Mar. 1836

John W. Thomson, Texas pioneer, was born in North Carolina, probably in Orange or Johnston County. He migrated to Tennessee and in 1835 joined a group that was traveling to Texas. Arriving there in January 1836, Thomson went initially to the town of Washington. From there he moved to San Antonio de Bexar, enlisted as a private in the Texas army medical corps, and was assigned to David Crockett's company. He died with Crockett at the Alamo. In 1883 a special act of the Texas legislature enabled Thomson's heirs to receive a grant of 3,036 acres of public land.

References:

Houston Telegraph and Texas Register, 24 Mar. 1836.

Records of the Alamo Chapel, San Antonio, Tex..

State of Texas, Special Laws, Eighteenth Legislature, no. 10 (1883).

Amelia W. Williams, "A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and the Personnel of Its Defenders," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 37 (1933–34). Records in the Alamo Chapel indicate that a portrait of Thomson was owned by Mr. and Mrs. George Cook, Sunnymeade Drive, Bellemeade, Nashville, Tenn., but efforts to verify this have not been successful.

 

Subjects: 
Biographies
Pioneers and Explorers
Authors: 
Detrick, Robert H.
Origin - location: 
Johnston County
Orange County
From: 
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, University of North Carolina Press.

1 January 1996 | Detrick, Robert H.