Background
Thomson is said to have been born in Pennsylvania on January 16, 1727, and to have moved with his Scotch-Irish parents, Moses and Jane Thomson, during the 1730's to settle in Amelia Township, S. C.
Thomson is said to have been born in Pennsylvania on January 16, 1727, and to have moved with his Scotch-Irish parents, Moses and Jane Thomson, during the 1730's to settle in Amelia Township, S. C.
He had the usual frontier education and became an expert rifleman.
Beginning life by planting with his father, William Thomson was a trader to the Cherokee Indians probably until the outbreak of the Cherokee War, when, as major commandant of the Rangers, he rendered important services for which the Assembly voted him a gratuity.
After the war, having received a number of land grants, he planted indigo, and was active in local affairs as justice of the peace, enquirer and collector of taxes, commissioner for building the parish church, representative in the Assembly, and colonel of the Orangeburg militia.
In the disturbances between the Regulators and Scovilites, he was one of the leaders who averted bloodshed, and when courthouses were finally built in the backcountry, he became the first sheriff of Orangeburg. In 1772, he was also a commissioner for adjusting the boundary with North Carolina. At the opening of the Revolution, he was placed on the General Committee and became a member of the first Provincial Congress.
When William H. Drayton carried the Continental Association into the backcountry, Thomson as lieutenant-colonel-commandant supported him with the militia, and was one of the witnesses to Drayton's treaty with the Loyalists on September 16, 1775.
Under Col. Richard Richardson, he served in the "Snow Campaign" of that year against the Loyalists, and was in command of the party that captured Robert Fletchall.
His dispersal of Patrick Cunningham's followers at the great Cane Brake was supposed at the time to have shattered the king's party in South Carolina. His greatest service was rendered at the battle of Fort Moultrie in June 1776, when with 700 Rangers he blocked the British attempt to land on the east end of Sullivan's Island. For this he received the thanks of Congress.
When the Rangers became the third regiment of South Carolina continentals, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, and served under Robert Howe in the defense of Savannah. In 1778 he resigned from the continental service and commanded the Orangeburg militia.
He was also elected to the state Senate and served there intermittently until the close of his life. Upon the surrender of Charlestown, he was paroled, and his plantation became a fortified British post. Accused of having broken his parole, he was imprisoned in a dungeon for several months in Charlestown. Upon his exchange in June 1781, he joined Greene and is said to have served in an advisory capacity without a command.
After the war, he returned to his devastated plantation and resumed planting, but is said to have been overgenerous to friends who involved him in financial losses. In March 1783, he secured an act establishing upon his plantation the market town of Belleville, which, however, never developed.
In 1795, he was defeated for Congress by Wade Hampton, and the following year he died at Sweet Springs, Va. , where he had gone for his health.
In the South Carolina convention of 1788, he voted for ratification of the federal Constitution. In the state constitutional convention of 1790, he opposed a movement to return to Charleston as the state capital.
He contributed to the Revolutionary party the stabilizing influence of his solid dependability and common sense.
Amiable, energetic, and without brilliance.
On August 14, 1755, Thomson was married to Eugenia Russell. They had twelve children, four sons and eight daughters.
