Thompson was born in the town of Partridgefield (now Peru), Berkshire County, Massachussets in 1802. He was a son of Amherst and Sarah (Clarke) Thompson, and a descendant of James Thompson who emigrated to Salem, Massachussets, in 1630, later moved to Charlestown, and in 1642 settled in Woburn. John's boyhood was spent on a mountain farm,
His early education was obtained in neighboring schools and at Harley Academy.
For a time he taught a select school at Albany, N. Y. , and then associated himself with the firm of Yates & McIntyre, which was engaged in promoting a lottery for the benefit of Union College. Thompson seems to have been fairly successful in selling lottery tickets, but in 1833 he appeared in New York City, where he opened a brokerage office in Wall Street on a capital of $2, 000.
His contact with the financial world revealed to him an opportunity which he was quick to improve. The fact that an increasing number of state banks were circulating currency in every part of the country made it next to impossible for bankers or merchants in the East either to detect counterfeits or to know the actual value at a given time of any form of bank paper issued in the West or South. Thompson believed that reliable information on these matters would be welcomed by the business community, even if the cost of acquiring it should be relatively high. Accordingly, in 1842 he began the periodical publication of Thompson's Bank Note and Commercial Reporter, which not only pointed out differences between the actual and the spurious issues of particular banks, but gave quotations of discount rates on currency and a record of actual rates of exchange throughout the country. It thus presented facts not otherwise obtainable by the individual except at great expense, and it attained a large weekly circulation.
In the course of the Civil War Thompson, through his publication, attracted the attention of Secretary Chase and readily obtained a hearing on legal-tender and national bank policies. In 1863 soon after the establishment of the system of national banks, he received the charter for the First National Bank in New York City. He and his sons, Samuel and Frederick, originally owned the entire capital stock of $300, 000. Most of the city's banks, operating under state charters, were distrustful of Secretary Chase's policies and looked with disfavor on his national banking system. Consequently, for some time Thompson's institution could not get clearing-house privileges and was chiefly engaged in the marketing of United States bonds.
In 1873, the year that Jay Cooke failed, George F. Baker and Harris C. Fahnestock bought a controlling interest in the First National on condition that Thompson retain the presidency. Four years later, at the age of seventy-five, he withdrew and with his two sons founded the Chase National Bank, of which for a short time, after the death of his son Samuel in 1884, he was president.
In his latter years he became erratic on questions of money and finance. The Chase Bank admitted in 1887 that its venerable founder was "a strong advocate of silver, " and articles by him appeared, with others by Thurlow Weed and Edwards Pierrepont in The Silver Dollar of the United States and Its Relation to Bi-Metallism (1889), but he did not live to see the "sixteen-to-one" agitation of the next decade.
In 1829 he had married Electa Ferris, who with a son and a daughter survived him.
