The Holy Bible Containing The Old and New Covenant Commonly Called the Old and New Testament, Volume 2 - Scholar's Choice Edition by Charles Thomson (2015-02-04)
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Covenant, Commonly Called the Old and New Testament, Volume 1 - Primary Source Edition
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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The Life of Charles Thomson: Secretary of the Continental Congress and Translator of the Bible from the Greek
(The Life of Charles Thomson: Secretary of the Continental...)
The Life of Charles Thomson: Secretary of the Continental Congress and Translator of the Bible from the Greek is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This publication is a professional scan from an original edition of the book, and of the best possible quality. This popular classic work by Charles Thomson is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Charles Thomson then we highly recommend this publication for your reading enjoyment.
Charles Thomson was a secretary of the Continental Congress.
Background
Thomson was born in County Derry, Ireland, and came to America when he was ten years of age, one of six orphaned children set ashore at New Castle, Del. The mother had died in Ireland; the father, John Thomson, died on shipboard within sight of the American shores.
Education
Charles was ere long enabled to enter the academy of Dr. Francis Alison at New London, Chester County, Pa.
Career
After leaving the academy conducted a private school for a few years. In 1750, through his acquaintance with Benjamin Franklin, he received an appointment as tutor in the Philadelphia academy, and subsequently (1757 - 60) he was master of the Latin school in what ultimately became the William Penn Charter School. In 1760 he turned from teaching to the mercantile trade, in which he appears to have prospered.
Meanwhile, because of his reputation for fairness and integrity, he was chosen by the Indians to keep their record of proceedings at the treaty of Easton (1757), and in the following year he was adopted into the Delaware tribe, with a name meaning "man who tells the truth. " An outcome of these relations with the Indians was An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians from the British Interest, published in London in 1759.
Having long taken an active part in Pennsylvania politics, during the decade preceding the Revolution Thomson was in the forefront of all the colonial controversies with Great Britain, and in all of them the politician in him seems to have dominated the merchant. By the time, therefore, that the crucial days of May 1774 arrived, he had become an adept in politics according to the most approved Pennsylvanian standards, as is evinced by his own account of the neat maneuver by which Pennsylvania was brought into substantial accord with the Massachusetts proposals and the way was prepared for the assembling of the Continental Congress.
Thanks to Joseph Galloway, leader of the Pennsylvania conservatives, Thomson was prevented from being chosen a delegate to the Congress, but he was the very man in Philadelphia with whom John Adams, busily probing the minds of all and sundry on the vital questions involved, would wish to have, as he did have, "much conversation. " "This Charles Thomson, " Adams wrote, "is the Sam Adams of Philadelphia, the life of the cause of liberty, they say". Galloway was surprised as well as chagrined when this Charles Thomson, whom he characterized as "one of the most violent of the Sons of Liberty (so called) in America", was chosen by Congress to be its secretary.
Following the adjournment of Congress at the end of October, Thomson was characteristically conspicuous in the Pennsylvanian political scene, and on the reassembling of Congress in May 1775 he was again chosen secretary. For nearly fifteen years he sat at the secretarial table, listening to the debates, minuting the birth-records of a nation. As year succeeded year, delegates came and delegates went, but Charles Thomson, the "perpetual secretary, " remained. The great drama of the American Revolution as enacted on the stage of the Continental Congress he beheld from its beginning to its consummation as did no other man. Although Congress from time to time prescribed some of the duties of the secretary, occasionally laid new tasks upon him, and even now and then sought to "regulate" the secretarial functions, the office was from the first to the last conducted much as Thomson was pleased to conduct it.
As the chief surviving link between the old government and the new he was chosen to notify General Washington of his election to the presidency; yet, to his great mortification, he was given no part in the inaugural ceremonies. His hope that he might be continued in a similar or appropriate office under the new dispensation was likewise doomed to disappointment. Accordingly, on July 23, 1789, he transmitted to President Washington his resignation of the office of secretary of the Continental Congress and of the custodianship of its records.
Retiring to his estate at "Harriton, " near Philadelphia, he devoted the next twenty years to making translations of the Septuagint and the New Testament, translations that have been pronounced both scholarly and felicitous. They appeared in 1808 in four volumes under the title The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Covenant, Commonly Called the Old and New Testament. He also published A Synopsis of the Four Evangelists (1815).
Thomson was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813.
Connections
Thomson was twice married. His first wife, Ruth Mather, daughter of John Mather of Chester, Pa. , died about 1770. His second marriage, which took place on September 1, 1774, four days before he was elected secretary of Congress, was to Hannah Harrison, daughter of Richard Harrison of Maryland. She died September 6, 1807.