Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas William Arthur Thompson Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

WILLIAM ARTHUR THOMPSON

(Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler)

William Arthur Thompson, who had the distinction of being the engineer on the first passenger train to enter Eureka, El Dorado and Wichita, was born in Paintville,Johnson County,Kentucky, January 23, 1853. He died inEl Dorado, November 27, 1931, after having been a resident of Kansas since 1873.

Mr. Thompson attended the public schools inIola, Kansas, and Independence, Missouri, quitting when he was 18 years old. For two years, he followed farming and,March 20, 1877, he obtained employment in the M. K. & T. Railway shops at Fort Scott, thus beginning a railroad career that continued for a period of forty-one years, or until February 1918, when he was retired at the age of 67. He left the M. K. & T. in 1882 and became an engineer on the old Wichita & Western, parent road of the Missouri Pacific and the Gould System in the Central West. It was during 1883 that theFort Scott, Wichita & Western built throughEl Dorado and Mr. Thompson was assigned an engineer on the first passenger train, which carried all the high officials and was greeted throughout the entire route by great demonstrations by citizens of the various pioneer communities. In 1887, when the shops were removed here from Reece, Mr. Thompson brought his family to El Dorado and resided here until 1907, before moving to Wichita, although the shops had been moved in 1900, from this to that city. He returned here with his family in 1918, when he was retired. As engineer, he was on crack limiteds and frequently handled the locomotive drawing notable specials, on which were such distinguished visitors in Kansas as Jay Gould, his son, George Gould and Theodore Roosevelt.

Mr. Thompson was of Scotch-Irish descent and came from a long line of American ancestry, which began in New York, went with the migration intoVirginia, later intoKentucky and, during the middle of the last century, into Missouri. His father, Rev. Abraham Wilbur Thompson, was an evangelist of the Southern Methodist Church and preached in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Kansas. He came to this state first in 1857, preaching inFort Scott. In 1859, he, with others, founded the present city ofIola. He supervised erection of the first residence and business structures there. He was too old for service in the Civil War, but was active in the Home Militia. Following the war, he moved toIndependence, Mo., and later, toVernon County, where he was a Methodist circuit rider. He was born in 1811 and died in Vernon County, in December 1872. Rev. Abraham Thompson married Elizabeth M. Koontz, a native of Virginia.

William Arthur Thompson was a member of the Southern Methodist Church; of the Masonic lodge, thirty-second degree; and with memberships inPatmos, El Dorado; the Consistory atWichita; and theMidian Shrine Temple, Wichita. He also belonged to the Wichita Division of the Brotherhood of Locomotives Engineers.

On December 23, 1875, Mr. Thompson married Tamer Caroline Pike, born in Missouri in 1861, and died inEl Dorado, April 14, 1928. She was the daughter of Moses Pike, a native of North Carolina, and a relative of the famous Col. Zebulon Pike, who headed exploring parties intoMissouri in the early part of the last century and through Kansas and intoColorado. Pike counties, located across the Mississippi River from each other inMissouri and Illinois are named for him, as also isPike’s Peak, second highest of the Colorado ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The Pikes emigrated from North Carolina into Kentucky, shortly after Daniel Boone blazed his historic trail, and some of them followed that intrepid pioneer intoMissouri, the Pikes going to the presentVernon County.

Eight of the eleven children born to William Arthur and Tamer Caroline (Pike) Thompson, are living. They are, in the order of their births: Pearl, who married W. H. Bulleyn; and lives inMilan, Washington; Della May, now Mrs. Lloyd Stagner,Blackwell, Oklahoma; Robert, living inEl Dorado; Grace (now Mrs. Ralph E. Thompson, residing in Wichita); Roy Arthur Thompson of El Dorado; Frank Thompson, of Redlands, Calif.; Irene, now Mrs. W. H. Binford, Chicago; and Ruth, who lives in Wichita.