Hugh Miller Thompson

Background

Thompson was born at Londonderry, Ireland, in 1830, the eldest son of John T. and Annie (Millar) Thompson. At the age of six he was brought to the United States.

Education

He attended the public school at Caldwell, N. J. , and later an academy at Cleveland, Ohio. Deciding to enter the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in 1849 he walked from Cleveland to Nashotah, Wis. , and enrolled as a student at Nashotah House.

Career

On June 6, 1852, he was ordered deacon by Jackson Kemper, bishop of Wisconsin, and was ordained priest by the same bishop at Portage, Wis. , on August 31, 1856. His early ministry was spent as a missionary in Wisconsin and Illinois. He served successively at Grace Church, Madison, Wis. , and the Church of the Nativity, Maysville, Ky. ; at Portage, Baraboo, Elkhorn, Kenosha, and Milwaukee, Wis. ; and at Galena, Ill. For one year he was rector of St. James's, Chicago, and in 1872 he became rector of Christ Church, New York, where he attracted large congregations. For several years he was rector of Trinity Church, New Orleans. He combined his rectorship at Kenosha with the chair of ecclesiastical history at Nashotah House, and founded Kemper Hall, a school for girls.

Late in 1882 he was elected bishop coadjutor of Mississippi and was consecrated in New Orleans on February 24, 1883. Four years later, on the death of William Mercer Green, senior bishop, Thompson became diocesan bishop and served until 1902.

He had an unusual combination of gifts; he was an excellent teacher, and had a natural aptitude for metaphysics, large attainments as a scholar, and popular gifts as a preacher.

He used his pen with good effect in church journalism. From 1860 until its consolidation with the Churchman in 1871, he was editor of the American Churchman, published in Chicago, and subsequently he edited the Church Journal, published in New York. He had the knack of making the commonplace interesting, and his comments on current events were shrewd and shot through with sound common sense. Many of his editorials were widely copied and in 1872 selections from them were published under the title of "Copy": Essays from an Editor's Drawer. The volume passed through many editions and had a wide circulation in England. In 1897 he published More "Copy"; a Second Series of Essays from an Editor's Drawer. Among his other writings were Unity and Its Restoration (1860); First Principles (1869); Absolution (1872); The World and the Logos (1886), Bedell Lectures; The World and the Kingdom (1888), Paddock Lectures; The World and the Man (1890), Baldwin Lectures; The World and the Wrestlers: Personality and Responsibility (1895), Bohlen Lectures. Bishop Thompson died at Jackson, Miss. , at the age of seventy-two.

Achievements

• He is remembered as the second Bishop of Mississippi.

Works

More photos

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  • The World and the Kingdom (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The World and the Kingdom These Lectures ar...)

  • "Copy.": Essays from an Editor's Drawer, On Religion, Literature, and Life

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Eternal Penalty. Nine Essays from "The Northwestern Church" (German Edition)

    ( About the Book Collections of Essays are anthologies th...)

  • Absolution, Examined In The Light Of Primitive Practice

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • First Principles: Nine Essays From the American Churchman

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The World and the Wrestlers

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Religion

He had a strong antipathy to the Anglo-Catholic movement and extreme ritualism.

Connections

In 1853 he married Caroline Berry, by whom he had a son and a daughter; his wife died in 1857 and on October 25, 1859, he married Anna Weatherburn Hinsdale, by whom, also, he had a son and a daughter.

Father:

John T. Thompson

Mother:

Annie (Millar) Thompson

Second wife:

Anna Weatherburn Hinsdale

First wife:

Caroline Berry