THOMPSON
THOMPSON
1754, and his widow married Josiah Pierce of
Woburn about 1756. Benjamin Thompson, Jr.,
attended the common schools of Woburn, and
private schools at Byfield and Medford, Mass.;
was aa apprentice clerk to John Appleton, an
importer of British
goods at Salem, Mass. ,
1766-69, and subse-
quently to a dry
goods merchant of
Boston. He devoted
his leisure to the
study of mathemat-
ics, French, music,
drawing, and to me-
chanical and philoso-
phical experiments.
He studied medicine
with Dr. John Hay in
Woburn; attended,
with his friend. Loam-
mi Baldwin (q.v.),
a course of scientific lectures at Harvard college,
and taught scliool in Wilmington and Bradford,
and in Rumford (Concord), N.H. He was mar-
ried in January, 1773, to Sarah, daughter of the
Rev. Timothy Walker, and widow of Col. Benja-
min Rolfe of Rumford, N.H. He was soon after
commissioned major of the 2d provincial regiment
by Governor AVentworth, an appointment which
caused him to be suspected of disloyalty to the
cause of liberty in 1775. His house was mobbed,
and he sought refuge in flight to Woburn, leav-
ing his wife and infant daughter in Rumford.
At Woburn he was arrested, but after a trial be-
fore his townsmen emphatically acquitted of dis-
loyalty. His unsuccessful application to General
Washington for a commission in the Continental
army, the result probably of his connection
with the provincial militia in New Hampshire,
caused him to leave Woburn, Oct. 7, 1775, and he
proceeded overland to Newport, R.I., and thence
on board the British frigate Scarborough to
Boston. This flight was followed in 1778 by his
proscription, and in 1781 by the confiscation of
his property. On the evacuation of Boston in
1776, he was sent with the news to England,
where he was received with favor and taken into
the ofi6.ce of Lord George Germain, one of the
secretaries of state, by whom he was appointed
secretary for Georgia. Having resumed his scien-
tific studies and experiments in gunpowder, he
pviblished the results of some of his investigations
in the Transact ionsof the Royal society of London,
to which he was elected a fellow, April 23, 1779.
He served as under-secretary for the colonies in
1780, and in 1781, in pursuance of his commis-
sion as lieutenant-colonel commandant of King's
American dragoons at New York, he returned to
America, landing, in consequence of contrary
winds, at Charleston, S.C, where he remained
for a short time in command of various companies
of detached cavalry, on one occasion routing Gen-
eral Marion. Upon his arrival in New York he
raised his regiment of dragoons and encamped
near Flushing, Long Island. At the close of the
war, the regiment, having seen no active service,
was disbanded, and Colonel Thompson returned
to England. On his way to Vienna to join in the
threatened war between Austria and the Turks,
he was the guest of Prince Maximilian at Stras-
burg, who gave him a friendly letter to his uncle,
the elector of Bavaria. The introduction resulted
in an invitation to enter the latters service, and
having visited England to obtain permission from
the British government, where he also received
the honor of knighthood from George III., he re-
turned to Munich in October, 1785; was taken
into the elector's intimate service as aide-de-
camp and chamberlain, and furnished with a mag-
nificent equiment, including his residence, corps
of servants and military staff. He introduced
a new system of " oi-der, discipline and economy
among the troops; " organized a military acad-
emy; founded workshops for the soldiers and also
for the mendicants of the citj' of Munich, there-
by regulating the fearful pauperism of the times,
and established a hospital for those too infirm for
active labor. He was also interested in the improve-
ment of public roads and highways, and converted
a waste region of some six miles in circumference
into a garden, including a valuable stock-farm,
and known as the English Garden, wherein a
monument to the founder was placed in 1795.
Sir Benjamin was made a knight of the order of
St. Stanislaus by the King of Poland; commission-
ed elector 2)ro tempore; subsequently command-
er-in-chief of the general staff; appointed privy
councillor of state and head of tiie war depart-
ment, and in 1791 was invested with the rank of
a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, choosing
Rumford as the title of his new dignity. In ad-
dition to his experiments as a political economist.
Count Rumford engaged in meteorological re-
search; investigated the properties of gunpowder
in which he had always been actively interested,
and the nutritive value of various articles of food
with special reference to the practical relief of
the poor, even publishing rules for the construc-
tion of public kitchens. He is also accredited the
honor of discovering the true doctrine of lieat,
and consequently of the correlation and equiva-
lence of physical forces. In 1795-96 he visited
Italy and Great Britain for the benefit of his
health; securing the successful adoption of many
of his charitable measures, especially that of the
public kitchen, in Edinburgh, London and Dublin,
and receiving in the last city the thanks of the
