Information Sheet

 

 

R         Thompson, Henry C.

47                    Papers, 1884-1970.

                                    29 folders.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are papers of a trustee of the State Historical Society of Missouri, genealogist, and a historian of mining in St. Francois County and the operations of the St. Joseph Lead Company.  The collection includes research notes and correspondence, and a group of lead company records, 1884-1902.

 

Henry Clay Thompson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1889.  He was educated as an electrical engineer, and spent most of his career employed by the St. Joseph Lead Com­pany in its electrical and mechanical departments at Bonne Terre, Missouri.  He retired in 1954 as supervi­sor of the electrical department.  He was an active civic leader, serving as the executive secretary of the Unicity Chamber of Commerce and participating in Masonic and church activities.  He died at Bonne Terre in 1974.

 

A life member of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Thompson was well-known as a ge­nealogist and historian of the lead belt of southeastern Missouri.  He authored four books, most notably Our Lead Belt Heritage and Sam Hildebrand, a history of the St. Francois County Civil War guerrilla.  As “The County Historian,” he wrote numerous articles for vari­ous Lead Belt newspapers.

 

Thompson carried on a wide correspondence to gather details for his histories, and his cor­re­spondents included members of the Desloge family in St. Louis, and officers of the St. Joseph Lead Company in New York.  He acted as semi-official historian of the company in 1951-1952, appointed by president Andrew Fletcher to begin work in 1951.  His involvement was limited to that of researcher in 1952 by board chairman Clinton H. Crane, who was pre­paring his own his­tory for the company’s centennial in 1963.

 

In accordance with his wishes, Thompson's papers and research materials were placed in the Bonne Terre Memorial Library following his death.  They have been filmed in two sepa­rate in­stallments.  Folders 1-21 contain general correspondence and notes on a wide variety of his­torical subjects, and also include a group of several hundred pages of records of the St. Joseph Lead Company, 1884-1902.  While many of these records concern only routine operat­ing mat­ters, there a number of letters between Charles B. Parsons (1839-1910), the company’s first su­perin­tendent at Bonne Terre, and officers of the company in New York.  Several of the letters de­tail company financing and marketing policy.  Folders 22-29 contain correspondence and notes in connection with the history of the St. Joseph Lead Company.  Thompson’s corre­spondents in­cluded Clinton H. Crane, Andrew Fletcher, treasurer George I. Brigden, and vice-presidents Ir­win H. Cornell and Rene J. Mechin.  Registers of the correspondence have been filmed in front of their respective folders.

 

 

 

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