THOMPSON, EDWIN PORTER
Financial difficulties delayed the construction of a new campus on the Crestview Hills property. In the meantime, buildings were rented or purchased near the main building on E. 12th St. in Covington to house the growing enrollment. In 1945 classrooms at St. Joseph School along Scott St. in Covington were acquired by the college. Other buildings used for classrooms in Covington included the Mother of God School on W. Sixth St., the Cathedral Lyceum and Columbus Hall on Madison Ave., Aquinas Hall and Bernard Hall North and South along Scott St., Cabrini Hall on 12th St., and Thomas More Hall (an old firehouse) on 12th St. In 1951 Rev. John F. Murphy was appointed dean of Villa Madonna College (he received the title of president in 1953) and remained in that post until 1971. It was under Murphy’s guidance that the college was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1959 and that the new campus was built. In 1966 plans for the new Crestview Hills campus were completed. Ground was broken on May 9, 1966, and construction on the multimillion-dollar project began. The campus was ready for occupancy in January 1968. During the following month, Bishop Richard H. Ackerman announced that the name of the institution was to be changed to Thomas More College, after the lord chancellor of England who was martyred for his faith by King Henry VIII. The college was officially dedicated on September 28, 1968. A surprise guest at the dedication was President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969). The Thomas More College campus in Crestview Hills has been a work in progress. Marian and Howard Residence Halls were ready for use during the 1968–1969 school year. Ackerman Hall, also a dormitory, was ready during the following year. In 1972 the Science Building was completed, and in 1989 the Connor Convocation Center was ready for athletic competition. More recent additions have included the Holbrook Student Center (1999) and Rev. John F. Murphy Residence Hall (2003). In 1967 the college acquired the U.S. Lock and Dam on the Ohio River in rural Campbell Co. Th is facility has been utilized as a biological field station ever since (see Center for Ohio River Research). Presidents of Thomas More College since Murphy have included Dr. Richard DeGraff (1971– 1978), Dr. Robert Giroux (1978–1982), Dr. Thomas Coffey (1982–1985), Dr. Charles Bensman (1986– 1992), Father William F. Cleves (1993–2001), Dr. E. Joseph Lee (2001–2004), and Sister Margaret Stallmeyer, C.D.P., who was officially inaugurated the 13th president of Thomas More College on April 28, 2005. Today there are approximately 1,500 students enrolled at the college, both fulland part-time, and two graduate programs are offered (business administration and a masters of arts in teaching). Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992. Reis, Jim. “Thomas More: College of Many Sites, Missions,” KP, November 25, 1985, 4K.
Saelinger, Sister M. Irminia. Retrospect and Vista: The First Fifty Years of Thomas More College. Newport, Ky.: Wendling, 1971. Schroeder, David E. “Thomas More College Archives Inventory,” 2000, Thomas More College Library, Crestview Hills, Ky.
David E. Schroeder
THOME, JAMES A. (b. January 20, 1813, Augusta, Ky.; d. March 4, 1873, Chattanooga, Tenn.). Antislavery activist James Armstrong Thome was the son of Arthur Thome, an emancipator accused of being a conductor of fugitive slaves in Augusta in Bracken Co. James A. Thome, who was also involved in helping slaves escape (see Abolitionists), was threatened with arrest and imprisonment if he returned to his home at Augusta from Oberlin College, where he was working on a theology degree. The threat had been issued because James had successfully removed a slave, Judah, from Augusta across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, and then on to Canada. Perhaps Thome’s zeal concerning the antislavery movement is best expressed in his own words: “Oh! The slave kitchens of the South are the graveyards of the mind. Every countenance of their miserable inmates is the tombstone of a buried intellect, and the soulless eye is its dreadful epitaph!” Arthur Thome (1769–1855) was one of Augusta’s fi rst settlers, quickly becoming wealthy in the flourmill business and other enterprises. His three-story mansion was later the home of the Marshall family, ancestors of Gen. George C. Marshall. At the insistence of his son James, Arthur Thome freed his men and women slaves between 1832 and 1836 and also became one of the area’s most successful conductors of the Underground Railroad, the escape network helping to take fugitive slaves to freedom. One former slave from Maysville reported in the June 1, 1839, issue of the Colored American, published in New York, that the Thomes were highly instrumental in the work of the Underground Railroad. According to slave Robert, “[Arthur] Thome would get out of his bed in the middle of the night to help runaway slaves out of the reach of their masters. He would give them clothes and money and send them across the Ohio River. He was very rich, he said, or he could not live there, meaning, it was understood, that his great wealth made his slave-holding neighbors afraid to injure him.” Arthur’s son James was educated at Augusta College, where debates on slavery were held as early as 1826. Martin Ruter, the first president of the college, was one of the founding members of the Kentucky Colonization Society, an organization that endorsed sending emancipated slaves to the colony established in the newly formed West African country of Liberia. After graduation from college, James Thome entered the prestigious Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. In 1833 and 1834 he participated in the noted Lane Debates on slavery that caused Theodore Weld, Thome, and 50 other students to leave the Lane Seminary, eventually becoming members of the first theology class at Oberlin College. Thirty of Thome’s letters to Weld,
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some of which were written in Augusta, were published in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke. Thome delivered a speech in May 1834 to the Annual Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he became a vice president. In 1836 this group commissioned Thome to examine the results of immediate emancipation in the West Indies, in order to advance the cause in the United States. In winter 1837, Thome penned from his home in Augusta the manuscript for his Emancipation in the West Indies, which was published in 1838. Not all of Thome’s influential writings were devoted to the cause of the enslaved; he also wrote a lesser-known pamphlet, Address of the Females of Ohio. Thome’s views in the pamphlet were delivered by him at the Ohio Anti-Slavery Anniversary in April 1836 and then later published by the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Cincinnati. Both Arthur and James Thome suffered consequences for their acts of conscience. Family letters on fi le at Oberlin College refer to their plight while they lived in Augusta, where they endured difficulties ranging from harassment to outright threats against their personal safety. As these actions became more severe, the elder Thome and his family sold the Thome mansion and businesses in Augusta at a financial loss and moved to Athens, Mo., where he is credited with establishing another Underground Railroad pathway to freedom. James A. Thome became an influential minister in Cleveland and Mount Vernon, Ohio. After the Civil War, he traveled to Europe, raising money for the education of former slaves; his Augusta College friend John G. Fee had been similarly engaged at Berea College. Thome’s later years were spent as a successful minister. In 1871 he became pastor of the First Congregation Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., the town where he died of pneumonia two years later. Miller, Caroline R. “Abolitionists of Augusta’s ‘White Hall’: Arthur and James Thome,” NKH 11, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 2003): 46–55.
Caroline R. Miller
THOMPSON, EDWIN PORTER (b. May 6, 1834, Center, Metcalfe Co., Ky.; d. March 4, 1903, Frankfort, Ky.) Educator and author Edwin Porter Thompson was the eldest son of Lewis M. and Mary R. Thompson. He was 12 years old when his father died, and he soon learned to become a survivor. Before the Civil War he was studying for the bar, but the war dashed his plans for a law career. During the war, he was a captain and fought with the 6th Kentucky Infantry (CSA). Wounded twice, he carried several bullets in his body to his death. After the war, he went to Owen Co. and established the Harrisburgh Academy in 1869, which in 1876 became Owen College. The school flourished into the late 1880s. As an academic, Thompson was a mathematician and a linguist. During the course of his lifetime, he wrote six books. Before the war, he published a mathematical textbook, Academic Arithmetic, that was used statewide.