Josiah VanKirk Thompson and Unknown

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Husband Josiah VanKirk Thompson ^{1 2 3}

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           Born: Abt 1855 - Menallen Twp, Fayette Co, PA
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         Father: Jasper Markle Thompson (1822/1822-1889) 2 4 5
         Mother: Eliza Carothers (      -      ) 1 5

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       Marriage: 

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   Other Spouse: Mary Anderson (      -1896) 6 - 11 Dec 1879 6

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Wife Unknown

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           Born: 
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Children

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General Notes: Husband - Josiah VanKirk Thompson

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After obtaining a preliminary education, he entered Jefferson College, at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, like his elder brother, William M. Thompson, and was graduated with the class of 1871, of which his brother was also a member. On the completion of his studies, he entered the service of the First National Bank, of Uniontown, of which he became teller in 1872. He evinced a marked aptitude for the banking business and remained identified with those interests, becoming cashier of the First National Bank in 1877. Upon the death of his father, he became president of the bank. Recognized as a leading and representative adherent to Republican principles, he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor of the state in 1906, and in the canvass preceding the convention showed elements of great strength and wide popularity.

He was born and reared on a farm along Jennings run in Menallen township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, the youngest of the four siblings. As a boy he engaged actively in farm work, mastering all its phases and cultivating a taste for the pursuits of agriculture. His early education was acquired at the short winter terms of the Hague and Poplar Lane public schools of South Union township, and at Madison college, Uniontown. With this preparation he entered Washington and Jefferson college in 1868 and graduated in 1871, and became a trustee of that institution in 1889. In the same year in which he graduated he entered the First National bank of Uniontown as a clerk, and just eighteen years thereafter he passed through successive promotions until though merely thirty-five years of age he was at the head of the leading financial institution of the county. On April 3, 1872, he was made teller; on June 5, 1877, he became cashier; and on the death of his father in March, 1889, he was elected president to succeed him. Mr. Thompson soon developed banking capabilities of a high order, and he adopted a policy which rapidly brought this bank to a front position in the honor list of banks published by the Comptroller of the Currency. The First National bank of Uniontown came to rank fourth in Pennsylvania and eighth in the United States of National banks in the ratio of surplus and undivided profits to the capital stock.
In addition to his banking business, Mr. Thompson bore a leading part in the industrial development of the county. He bought direct from the farmers of Fayette County more coal, and paid them more money, than any other one man or company or corporation operating in the county. Most of the coke companies operating in Fayette County bought the bulk of their coal lands either from him or through him, and it was chiefly due to his efforts that the National Steel Company and the American Steel and Wire Company were induced to make their investments of millions of dollars in coal lands and coke plants in the new Klondike coal fields of southern Fayette County. In addition to his operations in Fayette, Mr. Thompson took up many thousands of acres in Washington and Greene counties, and in the border counties of West Virginia. Mr. Thompson's business judgment gained him appointment as one of the seven government viewers to view and condemn the locks and dams, franchises, etc., of the Monongahela Navigation Company in the proceedings taken by congress to make the Monongahela river free to navigation.
Mr. Thompson was connected with many business enterprises in the town and county. He was president of the News Publishing Co., publishing the daily and weekly "News Standard;" president of the Union Cemetery Co., of Fayette County; secretary and treasurer of the Fayette County Railroad Company. He was the moving spirit in the erection of the opera house block by the bank, completed in 1883 at a cost of about $65,000. Mr. Thompson, in connection with Mr. J. D. Ruby, erected one of the finest stone and buff-brick buildings in the county, the handsome Thompson-Ruby business block, opposite the bank on the southwest corner of Main and Morgantown streets, at a cost of about $40,000. Mr. Thompson was a member of the Uniontown school board when the large new addition was built to the borough school building, and he served as a member of the town council for eight consecutive years, from March, 1892, to March, 1900, during all of which time he was president of that body, and under his presidency and financial management most of the brick paving in Uniontown was done, and the assessments for the same were collected from every abutting property holder, without a single suit in court. During his incumbency in councils also he refunded the borough's bonded debt from four to three per cent.
Though making no parade of it, Mr. Thompson was most liberal in his benefactions to charity and the churches, and no worthy cause or object appealed to him in vain. There was probably not a church in the town that was not under large obligations to him. He was a member of the First Presbyterian church beginning in February, 1872, and was a large giver to all its interests.
Mr. Thompson was a Republican in politics, and took a keen interest in that party's success. His counsel and aid are always sought and generously given, though he has never sought political preferment for himself, nor accepted any office save such as carried plenty of work and no salary.

Though he had many other vast interests on hand, he gave first attention to the bank. His capacity for work was extraordinary, often covering eighteen to twenty hours of the twenty-four. It was no uncommon thing to see him going home from the bank for a nap when the first gray streaks of dawn were breaking across the mountain, but no one ever saw him work after midnight on Saturday, for it was an inflexible rule of his life that for himself and his employes there shall be an absolute cessation from business on the Sabbath day. He was known to work in the bank until a late hour at night, and then take a team, drive fifteen miles to the Monongahela river, cross over and be paying tens of thousands of dollars to the farmers of Greene County for their coal before they had had their breakfast.
Mr. Thompson's rules respecting his employes are of interest. He was himself strictly temperate, using tobacco in no form and never drinking any thing stronger than cold water, not even coffee or tea. He would have no employe in his bank who, either in or out of banking hours, used intoxicating liquors of any kind, or smoked or chewed tobacco. But while much work was expected of these employes, they received the highest salaries paid by any bank in Pennsylvania outside the large cities. When, on a certain occasion, he was asked how much bond he required of his employes, the answer was characteristic: "None; I would not have an employe in this bank who had to give bond.'' Mr. Thompson's standard of fitness for service was that a young man must be bonded by his character, and his freedom from the vices and habits that enslave and enfeeble.

1 Franklin Ellis, History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 351.

2 Editor, Nelson's Biographical Dictionary and Historical Reference Book of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Uniontown, PA: S. B. Nelson, Publisher, 1900), Pg 841.

3 G. O. Seilhamer, Esq, The Bard Family (Chambersburg, PA: Kittochtinny Press, 1908), Pg 335.

4 Franklin Ellis, History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts & Co., 1882), Pg 350.

5 G. O. Seilhamer, Esq, The Bard Family (Chambersburg, PA: Kittochtinny Press, 1908), Pg 321.

6 Editor, Nelson's Biographical Dictionary and Historical Reference Book of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (Uniontown, PA: S. B. Nelson, Publisher, 1900), Pg 843.