Jonathan Thompson (lawyer)
Jonathan Thompson was an American lawyer and land speculator of the Natchez District in Mississippi, United States, active during the territorial and early statehood period. Originally from Massachusetts, he traveled to Mississippi Territory with Aaron Burr in 1806 in the flotilla now associated with the Burr conspiracy. He is best remembered today for his ownership of what are now historic antebellum mansions; for helping his client Harman Blennerhassett attempt to obtain repayment from Aaron Burr and Andrew Jackson for expenditures made during the Burr expedition ; and for dying with his family in the 1823 yellow fever outbreak in Natchez. Winthrop Sargent, the first governor of Mississippi Territory, was his brother-in-law. Surviving records of his indebted estate have been used by researchers studying the financial systems of the early years of the Cotton Kingdom U.S. South and the impact of the Panic of 1819 on the planter class.
Biography
Thompson is believed to have been born in 1782 in Massachusetts to Betty and Thaddeus Thompson. Thompson traveled to the Mississippi Territory in the winter of 1806–07, in company with Aaron Burr, as part of what is known as the Burr expedition.He worked as a lawyer and one of his clients was Winthrop Sargent, first governor of Mississippi Territory.
Spanish grants were confirmed to him in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, one on the site of present-day Ferriday.
His first local real estate transaction in the Natchez District was a deal with John S. Miller in 1808.
In 1812, in his capacity as attorney for Harman Blennerhassett, who was in "financial distres," he wrote to future U.S. president Andrew Jackson and "attempted to extort the funds Burr and Alston allegedly owed him, by threatening to publish documents in his hands".
Jackson ignored the pressure, and took the issue to court. According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, "While in Mississippi on the Natchez expedition, both Jackson and John Coffee filed depositions with the court on March 25, 1813...The case was continued from the April to the October session, 1813, with Jackson again summoned. Then preparing to leave with his troops for the Creek country and unable to attend, Jackson filed another deposition, supported by a statement from William Eastin." The Adams Court ultimately decided that Jackson owed no debt to Blannerhasset, or Burr. Josiah Snelling later wrotein a biography produced in opposition to Jackson's 1832 presidential campaignthat the editor of the Natchez Ariel reported that Jackson had "'threatened to hang the attorney to the first tree, or highest tree,' if he attempted to arrest him on that account. We do not pretend to vouch for the accuracy of this report, but we do know the friends of the attorney were in the habit of quizzing him on this subject for some time after the general left this ."
Thompson was married to Anna Williams in Adams County, Mississippi Territory on January 19, 1814. Through this marriage Winthrop Sargent became his brother-in-law. In 1816, Thompson's brother-in-law David Williams lent him ; Thompson put up 32 slaves as collateral. In addition to Sargent and Williams, Thompson often did business with David L. Trask, who was originally from Massachusetts and was typically addressed using the honorific colonel. Their partnership involved "operation of cotton plantations with enslaved labor and speculation in bank stock and steamboat stocks, to endorsing notes and loans for one another for a number of investments in the area." Thompson once tried to help Trask's brother Israel E. Trask get a loan from a Natchez bank.
In the 1810s he had some part in the ownership or construction of Arlington house in Natchez. The history of Arlington, and many other Natchez-area structures, has been clouded by shoddy research produced during the New Deal era by Edith Moore for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Archival research shows that Thompson built Arlington sometime between 1816 and 1821. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Arlington, produced in 1973, "Deed records indicate that a land speculator, Jonathan Thompson, owned the property from 1814 to 1818, when he sold it to ; the deed mentions 'extensive improvements'." He became a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814. He may have been responsible for the historically significant mansion Hawthornethe house was possibly built "as early as 1818."
In 1819 he was a founding board member of a planned school called Natchez Academy, along with Henry Postlethwaite, John Henderson, John Hankinson, James Foster, Elijah Smith, Daniel D. Elliott, Charles B. Green, James Metcalfe, Edward Turner, John Hosmer, Henry Huntingdon, Lyman Harding, and William Bullitt. The Panic of 1819 triggered new financial strains on Thompson, so he borrowed $3,400 from Sargent and by July "with cotton prices in freefall, he borrowed more, and soon he owed Sargent more than $13,000."
In 1822 he was named trustee of a planned Episcopal Church in Natchez, in company with Benjamin Farar, John Minor, James Moore, Richard G. Ellis, Jos. E. Davis, Robert Moore, John T. Griffith, James C. Williams, James K. Cook, and Henry Stark. He was appointed to the building committee with Stephen Duncan, Henry Postlethwaite, Martin Whiting, and Wm. B. Griffith.
He is considered the first owner of a Natchez house now known as Green Leaves; as he "owned the entire square, and there is a probability that he erected Green Leaves as a town house, it being the custom of the wealthy at that time to maintain several establishments," as told by Catherine Van Court's In Old Natchez. According to Adams County legal records, in 1823, Thompson sold 1,000 arpents of land to Stephen Duncan; this property later became known as Saragossa Plantation.
By the 1820s, Thompson had become a heavily leveraged, mid-tier planter. William Kenner & Co. appears to have served as cotton factor to both Thompson and Sargent.
Death
The August–September 1823 outbreak of yellow fever in Natchez was virulent and devastating. According to an account published in a Vermont newspaper on September 30:The 1823 infections seemed to take a rapid course to mortality, with many victims dying within 12 hours of being found symptomatic.
According to one Natchez history, "Thompson and his family died of yellow fever while they prepared to leave the city to stay at Hawthorne." A newspaper death list included "Jonathan Thompson and wife" among those who died "in the country", between August 19 and September 5, 1823.
Physician Samuel A. Cartwright, who wrote an article about "malignant fever" for an 1826 issue of the Medical Recorder of Philadelphia, recorded of the 1823 yellow fever outbreak in Natchez, that "it is worthy of remark, that until the 25th, when 17 died of yellow fever, the disease was principally confined to the southern district of the city and suburbs, which contained the putrid animal matter. Families living in the suburbs of the southern and eastern parts of the city, among whom were that of Mr. Jonathan Thompson, and several hands belonging to Mr. Breill, were attacked sooner than those who lived in the block of the northern district."
A description of Thompson's final hours appeared in La Roché's 1855 study of yellow fever:
According to Van Court, "A brick vault was hastily constructed to receive their bodies, and the family was buried together. Their untimely death left a tremendous estate to distant relatives and connections." He was interred at Gloucester Cemetery at Gloucester House, alongside other early Mississippi notables including Sargent and S. S. Prentiss.
Estate
Real estate held in his name included two plantations, Pine Grove and Bradley, along with his townhome in Natchez. His personal property was valued at $13,207 circa 1823. At the time of his death he was the legal owner of 97 enslaved people worth approximately $30,000. He had two real estate mortgages and 33 mortgages on enslaved people. He was owed approximately at the time of his death, of which was deemed by his executors to be likely unrecoverable. He owed $13,000 to Sargent and had borrowed and not yet repaid $10,000 from Trask to cover a prior debt owed Sargent.There were also 60 creditors holding 64 claims against his estate "amounting to an uncollateralized debt against him of $84,007." His debt and credit relationships were predominantly local and "had little connection to larger networks of international credit." An 1824 auction of Thompson's real and personal property took place over six days and yielded approximately $39,400. Newspaper notices published in 1826 represented the estate to be insolvent.