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Edward Thomson was the first president of Ohio Wesleyan University, editor, and bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Background
Edward was born in Portsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, England, in 1810, the fourth of thirteen children. His father, Benjamin Thomson, was a dry-goods merchant; his mother, Eliza Moore, a woman of education and attainments. In 1817, because of financial reverses, the father sought a new business location, first going to southern France and thence to America (1818), finally settling in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, where he opened a drug store.
Education
In Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, young Thomson received his early education and manifested such an interest in books that he neglected play. In 1828 he entered Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and after a year's study passed the examinations which admitted him to medical practice.
He served at Sandusky and Cincinnati, and at the latter place took a full course of lectures at the Cincinnati Medical College, from which he received the degree of M. D.
Career
He opened an office at Jeromeville, Ohio, a small village near Wooster. While he was engaged in practice his interest in religion was awakened by the preaching of Russell Bigelow, an eloquent Methodist circuit rider, whom he heard at a camp-meeting, where he had been called to make a professional visit. This interest grew until in December 1831 he united with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the next year, July 1, was licensed to preach. In the fall of 1832 he was admitted on trial to the Ohio Conference and assigned as junior preacher on the Norwalk circuit. His rise to a place of influence in the Methodist Episcopal Church was rapid.
In 1836 he was appointed to Detroit. In 1838 Thomson was appointed principal of Norwalk Seminary, and four years later was chosen president of Ohio Wesleyan University, then in process of establishment. From 1844 until he took up his duties as president in 1846 he edited the Ladies' Repository at Cincinnati. His presidency covered the formative years of the institution's life and at the time of his retirement in 1860 the college was well established, with four buildings and a student body of about five hundred.
Thomson was a strong antislavery man, and this fact together with his recognized literary abilities led to his selection in 1860 as editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal in New York, the chief Methodist organ in the United States. This important post he filled admirably during the years of the Civil War, conducting the paper on a high patriotic plane. He represented the North Ohio Conference in the General Conference from 1840 until in 1864 he was elected bishop. He was sent immediately to visit Methodist missions in the Orient, and later published a two-volume work entitled Our Oriental Missions (1870). His other published works include: Essays, Educational and Religious (1855, 1856, 1857); and Evidences of Revealed Religion (1872).
He died at Wheeling, W. Va. , while on his way to preside over the Eastern conferences.
On July 4, 1837, married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Hon. Mordecai Bartley.
His first wife died in 1863, and on May 9, 1866, he married Annie E. Howe, who with a son and daughter by his first wife and a son by the second survived him.