My Genealogy Hound

COL. R. E. THOMPSON, a citizen of Wilson County, Tenn., descended from the old Thompson, Cockrell, McNairy and Robertson families of Tennessee. Gen. James Robertson and John Cockrell were the first white men that ever stood on Capitol Hill. Col. Thompson was born at Cockrell’s Springs, near Nashville, in 1822. He was partly educated in Nashville, and in 1840 came to Lebanon and finished his education at Cumberland University. He married Miss Mary E. Tolliver, the eldest daughter of Col. Zach Tolliver, of Lebanon, Tenn., by whom he has six living children — two sons and four daughters — all of whom are doing remarkably well, his youngest son, Lillord, is attorney-general of the Seventh Judicial Circuit. Col. Thompson is a lawyer and farmer, and is noted as a criminal lawyer, and defends nearly all the criminals in his section of the county, but refuses to prosecute, never having prosecuted a man, although offered large fees to do so. In politics he is a low-tax Democrat, and is opposed to taxing the people to pay the railroad debt. He has been seven or eight times elected to the State Legislature, three or four times to each branch, and look a very active part in common school education and in the cause of temperance. He is not a very zealous advocate of the four-mile law, and offered a bill, and got it passed, excluding intoxicating liquors from every place in the State, excepting Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis, but the supreme court decided it was unconstitutional. He is a bold and fearless advocate of the rights of the masses of the people, and zealous of encroachments upon their rights by the monied corporations, consequently is often before the people, securing large majorities over very popular men. He still practices his profession, in which, together with other resources, yield him a competency in his old age. He is a Missionary Baptist in faith.