Maurice Thompson (1844 - 1901)

James Maurice Thompson was born September 9, 1844, in Fairfield, Indiana, the fifth child of Grigg Thompson, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Diantha Jagger. Around 1846 the family moved to Missouri and Kentucky, and then further south to the Cherokee Valley of north Georgia, where they settled near the town of Calhoun. 

Maurice received an education in classical literature, French and mathematics. His high school studies were soon interrupted by the Civil War.

Joining the Confederate Army just after his 18th birthday, the young Thompson served as a scout with the 63rd Regiment of Georgia Volunteers. His unit was assigned to garrison the coastal defense batteries at Thunderbolt and Rosedew Islands near Savannah.  As a scout, Maurice did a great deal of mountaineering, travelling with his unit through "the rugged, billowy region of North Georgia, North Alabama, and Eastern Tennessee."

Accustomed to camping in the field, Maurice Thompson became a life-long naturalist with a love for trail hiking, botany, ornithology and the legends of native tribes. He also became an expert hunter and archer.

After the war, Thompson returned to Calhoun, Georgia, where he studied surveying, civil engineering, and law. In 1867 he travelled to Florida, where he participated in a survey of Lake Okeechobee. At about this time he began his writing career.

In the late 1867, Maurice and his brother Will Henry Thompson moved back to Indiana, where they settled in the town of Crawfordsville.  They married sisters, the daughters of John Lee. Maurice married Alice Lee on 16 June 1868, and it was a happy union that lasted for life.

Thompson worked briefly as a railroad engineer, and he and his brother Will formed a law partnership in 1873.  Shortly thereafter, Maurice began to publish nature and archery essays in Appleton's Journal.  His big breakthrough arrived in the summer of 1877, when he published an essay on "Hunting with the Long Bow" in Harper's Monthly.  Very well received, it was soon followed by "Bow Shooting" in Scribner's Monthly and a book deal, which resulted in his archery classic The Witchery of Archery (1878).

The book sold out. 

Now firmly established as a popular writer, Thompson became "Archery Editor" for Forest and Stream magazine, and rode the crest of a wave of national enthusiasm. His writing began a national archery and scouting craze that was a clear pre-cursor to the Boy Scout movement.

In January 1879, a national convention of archers met in Crawford, IN, and installed Maurice Thompson as the first Chairman of the National Archery Association. During the following years, he presided over many national championship meets, and became known as the "Father of Archery" in America.

Elected to the Indiana State Legislature in 1879, Thompson went on to become a very popular and well respected nature writer, publishing more than 20 books and and a volume of poems before his death in 1901.  See a detailed list of his works here.

His most popular work, Alice of Old Vincennes (1900), appeared only a year before his death from pneumonia on 15 February 1901. 



Sources

Banta, R.E. "James Maurice Thompson (1844 - 1901)" Indiana Authors and Their Books 1816 - 1916 (Crawfordsville, IN: Wabash College, 1949)

Huntington, Cliff. "Maurice Thompson: The War Years."

Huntington, Cliff. "Maurice Thompson: The Final Years."

Wikipedia.  "Maurice Thompson."