USA > Connecticut > Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial; representative citizens, v. 5 > Part 7
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James Thompson, second son of Simon and Mary (Converse) Thompson, was born March 20, 1649, in Woburn, and was the only son of his father who lived to reach manhood. After his father's death, he lived to the age of twenty years with his
uncle, Samuel Converse, in the south part of Woburn (now Winchester), and as- sisted in the care of the mill, built by his grandfather, Edward Converse. James Thompson married (first) January 27, 1674, Hannah Walker, who died Febru- ary 4, 1686. James Thompson died Sep- tember 14, 1693. He made no will. His property was assigned by the court, in 1700, to his widow and five sons and the only daughter then living. Joshua Thomp- son, son of Lieutenant James and Han- nah (Walker) Thompson, was born Sep- tember 15, 1677, in Woburn, and settled in that part of the town which became Wilmington in 1730. He was admitted a member of the church in that place in 1742. He with others of the name was somewhat prominent in the affairs of the town. On March 2, 1731, he was elected "Clerk of the Market" an officer whose business seems to have been to aid in regulating the prices of labor and goods. He died July 10, 1760. He married, May 6, 1702, Martha Dayle, who died June 3, 1749.
Robert Thompson, second son of Joshua and Martha (Dayle) Thompson, was born in what is now Wilmington, probably about 1708. Early in life he settled in Windham, New Hampshire, where his descendants were numerous, and for many years active, efficient citizens. Two of his sons were soldiers in the French and Indian War, and three or four of them were soldiers of the Revolution. He died October 31, 1756.
Robert Thompson, eldest son of Robert Thompson, resided in Londonderry, New Hampshire, and was a member of the Board of Selectmen in that town in 1782. He was a soldier of the Revolution, and was an elder of the Presbyterian church, which proves him to have been a man of character and standing in the town. The maiden name of his wife, Margaret, is
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not discovered, but she is described as a "genteel woman." They were the par- ents of nine children. The sons seem to have been possessed of an adventurous spirit, and all except one went to South Carolina. The eldest died in his thirty- first year on the passage home from Cali- fornia in 1794.
James Thompson, son of Robert Thompson, was born August 18, 1764, in Londonderry, and died in Buckfield, Maine, December 23, 1845. He had three wives. He married (first) Margaret (or Peggie) Gregg, who died in 1793, in her twenty-seventh year. One son, Jonathan Gregg, was born of this marriage, August 12, 1792. He married (second) Martha Gilmore, the daughter probably of White- field and Margaret Gilmore, and who was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, January I, 1773. She moved with him, about 1801, to Buckfield, Maine, where her death occurred, November 17, 1833. Their children were: Whitefield Gil- more, Robert, Margaret, Sarah, James, Jeremiah Smith, Elizabeth, William Nel- son, Mary, Adam, John, Martha, Charles. Elisha was the only child by the third marriage. Whitefield Gilmore, Jeremiah Smith, James and William Nelson, all moved in early manhood to the town of Sangerville, Maine, where they became prosperous farmers and leading men in the community.
William Nelson Thompson, son of James and Martha (Gilmore ) Thompson, was born at Buckfield, Maine, October 29, 1806, and died at Foxcroft, Maine, November 26, 1886. He married Sarah Lancaster Whitney, December 1, 1833. Their children were: Martha N., born September 17, 1834, and William Gilmore, of whom further.
William Gilmore Thompson, son of William Nelson and Sarah Lancaster (Whitney) Thompson, was born at San-
gerville, Maine, May 22, 1836, and died October 7, 1912. He was reared on his father's farm, and educated in the public schools of Sangerville and at Foxcroft Academy. During his early manhood, he taught school and subsequently engaged in business and farming. After his mar- riage he removed to Guilford, where he lived until 1905, and then removed to the adjoining town of Foxcroft. He was a Republican in politics, but always de- clined to take an active part in political affairs. He was a member of the Board of Selectmen in Guilford for twenty years, tax collector for ten years, and served one term as county commissioner. He was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He married Sarah Hoyt, a daughter of Isaac and Olive (Goodwin) Hoyt, in 1864. They were the parents of seven children : Whitefield Nelson, Mar- tha, William H., Sarah Elizabeth, Mary Hubbard, Elbridge A., and Charles Hoyt.
Whitefield Nelson Thompson, A. B., M. D., physician and superintendent of the Hartford Retreat, the eldest son of William Gilmore and Sarah (Hoyt) Thompson, was born in Guilford, Maine, October 2, 1865. He attended the public schools, and Foxcroft Academy, and was there prepared for college, matriculating at Bates College, September, 1884. He left college in the middle of his course, to pursue the study of medicine, and at- tended the Portland School for Medical Instruction, the Medical School of Maine, and completed his medical course at Jef- ferson Medical College in April, 1889. His hospital experience began with an ap- pointment in August of the same year as assistant physician, locum tenens, at the Brattleboro, Vermont, Retreat. At the expiration of this term of service in May, 1890, he was appointed on the Medical Staff of the State Hospital at Taunton, Massachusetts, and filled the position of
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third, and subsequently second assistant physician, until December, 1891, when, in pursuance of a plan to enter upon the general practice of medicine he resigned this position to return to the Brattleboro Retreat. The death of Dr. Joseph Draper, superintendent of the Retreat, led to changes in the staff and Dr. Thompson's promotion to the assistant superinten- dency in July, 1892. He resigned this position in October, 1904, to accept one of a similar nature at the Hartford Re- treat, an institution for the insane estab- lished by the Connecticut State Medical Society in 1824, and in April of the follow- ing year, on the retirement of Dr. Henry P. Stearns, was appointed to the super- intendency, and has since held that posi- tion. Dr. Thompson lectures on Nervous and Mental Diseases at the Hartford Sem- inary Foundation, and has written and published articles pertaining to psychia- try. He is a member of the City, County, and State Medical societies, of the Amer- ican Medical Association, the American Medico-Psychological Association, and of the New England Society for the Study of Psychiatry. In 1913 Dr. Thompson was elected to the Board of Fellows of Bates College. He is a member of the Brattleboro Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons. In politics he is a Republican, but takes no part in public affairs. He is a member of the Twentieth Century Club and of other Hartford clubs.
Dr. Thompson married, September 14, 1893, Dr. Ida M. Shimer, a daughter of Dr. Jacob S. Shimer, a well known and successful physician of Philadelphia and a native of Shimerville, Pennsylvania, where his grandfather had received an original grant of land. They are the par- ents of three children, as follows : Marga- ret Shimer, Irene Shimer and Whitefield Shimer, deceased. Dr. Thompson and
his family are all members of the Central Congregational Church of Hartford.
Sarah Lancaster (Whitney) Thompson, the wife of William Nelson Thompson, and grandmother of Nelson Whitefield Thompson, was a descendant of Francis Whitmore, who was born in England in 1625, and died at Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, October 12, 1685. He was the owner of large properties and lands at Cambridge and several of the nearby towns; served in King Philip's War, and was selectman and constable in 1668 and 1682. His will contained a pro- vision for the education of his children. He married, about 1648, Isabel Parke, daughter of Richard and Margery (Crane) Parke, who died March 31, 1665.
Their son, John Whitmore, born at Cambridge, Massachusetts. October I, 1654, died at Medford, Massachusetts, February 22, 1739. Like his father, he served in the Indian War of the time and took part in the campaign at Saco, Maine, under Major Swayne, who was a deacon of the First Parish Church of Medford and the town treasurer. John Whitmore married, in 1677, Rachel (Eliot) Poulter, widow of John Poulter and daughter of Francis and Mary (Saunders) Eliot, born October 25, 1643, in Braintree, Massachu- setts, died March 20, 1723. She was a niece of John Eliot, the Indian Apostle.
John Whitmore, son of John and Rachel Whitmore, was born August 27, 1683, in Medford, and died at Billerica, March 26, 1753. In early life he was a housewright, but later engaged in business with his brother Francis, was a large slave owner, also possessed much property in land, and was active and liberal in church and town affairs. The church record of that time mentions him with much gratitude on account of his benefactions. He was one of those who gave to the separation
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of Bedford. In later life he removed to Billerica where, as already stated, his death occurred. He married, about 1706, Mary Lane, a daughter of Colonel John and Susan (Whipple) Lane, of Billerica, born May 15, 1686, and died at Billerica, March 27, 1783.
Their son, Francis Whitmore, was born at Medford, October 4, 1714, and was en- gaged in that place in business on a very large scale. His name appears on the records as one of the men who paid money to the persons who went to New York in September, 1776, and in the fol- lowing month he paid money to persons to go to Canada. In 1760 he purchased from the Plymouth Land Company, lot No. 3, in the town of Plymouth, Maine, and from that time onward spent most of his life there. In an account of the early settlement along the Kennebec river, it is stated that he was there as early as 1749, having squatted on the lot which he afterwards purchased. In an account of the establishment of Bowdoinham, by Peter Bowdoin, in 1762, it is further stated that a man named Whitmore had settled previously at Reed's Point on the Kennebec river and traded very largely with the Indians. He left a record of a life full of achievement and of the labor that meant much for the development of his adopted State. He died in Bowdoin- ham, April 27, 1794. Francis Whitmore married, January 31, 1739, Mary, daugh- ter of Lieutenant Stephen and Eliza (Fowle) Hall, born April 17, 1719, and died October 30, 1791. Their home was made, in the latter part of their lives, at Bowdoinham, Maine, and there Francis Whitmore died, April 27, 1794.
Their son, William Whitmore, was born at Medford, Massachusetts, Septem- ber 6, 1746. He married twice. First wife's maiden name was Davis. Second wife's maiden name not known. They re-
sided at Bath, Maine. Their daughter, Sarah D. Whitmore, the second in a fam- ily of eight children, was born November 27, 1794, and died in Corinth, Maine, March 27, 1868. She married (first) Jon- athan Whitney, who was born in Lisbon, Maine, June 10, 1788, and died in Dover, Maine, May 14, 1837. They resided in the early part of their married life at Bowdoinham, Maine, where the following children were born to them: Nancy, Wil- liam P., Sarah Lancaster, Elizabeth, James and Lydia. Sarah Lancaster, born May 31, 1816, died at Garland, Maine, June 9, 1903. She married William Nel- son Thompson, December 1, 1833.
BRAINERD, Lyman Bushnell, Insurance President.
Though the scion of one of New Eng- land's oldest families, Mr. Brainerd owed his success to his own persistent diligence and to those qualities of character with- out which no real success can be obtained. The name Brainerd, like most names of historic lineage, is variously spelled, but it is generally conceded that the spelling used by the late Lyman B. Brainerd and his progenitors was the original spelling.
The first of the name in this country was Daniel Brainerd, who, tradition says, was born about 1641, in Braintree, Eng- land, and was brought to America when he was about eight years old. An old manuscript that has been preserved, says he lived with the Wadsworth family in Hartford, Connecticut, until 1662, when, with others, he took up land in the un- broken wilderness about eight miles from Middletown, in what is now the town of Haddam. About 1663 or 1664 he married Hannah, daughter of Gerrard and Hannah Spencer, of Lynn, Massachusetts, who were among the first settlers of Haddam. She died about 1691. He died April I,
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L.B. Brauning.
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1715, and his tombstone still stands at Haddam. Daniel Brainerd was a man of considerable prominence, and was held in high esteem by his fellow citizens, if we may judge from the number of public offices with which he was honored. He was at different times, constable, surveyor, fence viewer, town assessor, collector, jus- tice of the peace. In 1669 he was elected commissioner by the general court at Hartford, and served as deputy to the general court for many years.
Daniel Brainerd, Jr., son of Daniel Brainerd, Sr., was born in Haddam, Con- necticut, March 2, 1666, and died January 28, 1743. He was a husbandman, and, like his father, was a prominent citizen. He was collector in the spring of 1688, served as surveyor in the same year and again in 1692, and in the following year was constable. He held the office of deacon in the Congregational church from 1725 until his death, and was captain of the company or train band in East Had- dam. He was representative to the gen- eral court a number of times. He mar- ried, about 1688, Susannah Ventres, who died January 26, 1754, in her eighty-sixth year.
Stephen Brainerd, son of Daniel Brain- erd, Jr., was born in East Haddam, Con- necticut, February 27, 1699, and died March 30, 1794. He was a farmer, settled in the town of Colchester, where he cleared land and built a cabin. He mar- ried, December 24, 1730, Susannah, daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth (Hun- gerford) Gates. She died April 29, 1793, in her eighty-eighth year, and was the first person buried in the Southwest Ceme- tery.
Captain William Brainerd, son of Ste- phen Brainerd, was born in Westchester, Connecticut, August 27, 1746, and died January 26, 1820. He was ensign in Colo- nel Wells's regiment, was captain of the
Fifth Company or Train Band in the Twenty-fifth Regiment of Connecticut, and was also captain in the Twenty-fourth Regiment, First Brigade. He married, December 31, 1772, Lucy Day, daughter of Abraham and Irene (Foote) Day, who died May 20, 1823, in her seventy-second year.
William Brainerd, son of Captain Wil- liam Brainerd, was born in Westchester Society, Colchester, Connecticut, October 23, 1773, and died March 18, 1844. He was appointed captain of the home militia, and the surveyor and collector from 1806 to 1822. He married, October 31, 1799, Patience Foote, daughter of Nathaniel and Patience (Skinner) Foote, who died June 19, 1859, in her seventy-seventh year.
Asa Brainerd, son of William Brainerd, was born in Westchester, Connecticut, December 24, 1816, and died April 25, 1898. He was a farmer, and held numer- ous offices, including membership in the board of relief in 1868; justice of the peace, 1879-82; grand-juror, 1884, and assessor for the years 1879, 1882 and 1886. He married, March 15, 1846, Susan Eliz- abeth Buell, born January II, 1830, died June 4, 1914, daughter of David and Oc- tavia (Day) Buell.
Lyman Bushnell Brainerd, son of Asa and Susan Elizabeth (Buell) Brainerd, was born in Westchester, Connecticut, March 27, 1856. There were eight chil- dren in the family, and Lyman B. Brain- erd was compelled by circumstances to devote considerable time to the work of the farm that would have been spent in acquiring an education could his desires have been realized. He attended the public school and spent one term at Wes- leyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachu- setts. He taught a district school in Moodus for awhile, and although success- ful in that vocation, he decided that his natural bent was in the line of a business
Conn-5-4
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career, which he began in March, 1876, when he became a fire insurance solicitor in Middletown, Connecticut, for the Agri- cultural Insurance Company of Water- town, New York. There, Mr. Brainerd became thoroughly familiar with the details of the fire insurance business, and in 1878 removed to Hartford, Connecticut, and became a canvasser for the State Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Hart- ford. One year later, he accepted a posi- tion as general agent and adjuster for the Jersey City Fire Insurance Company, with which company he remained for seven years, until 1886. He then entered the employ of the Equitable Mortgage Company of New York City as a nego- tiator of bonds. The following year he was elected secretary of the company, and in 1890 manager of the bond department.
During Mr. Brainerd's visits to Hart- ford in connection with the bond business, he formed a close friendship with Presi- dent James M. Allen, of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, and through him was offered, in 1894, a position as assistant treasurer of the company, which he accepted and returned to Hartford. He was elected treasurer of the company in 1899; in 1903 became a director, the death of Mr. Allen occurred in that year and Mr. Brainerd was elected president, July 12, 1904, to succeed Mr. Allen. He continued in that office until his death, which occurred at his late home, No. 80 Washington street, Hartford, October 11, 1916, and under his able management the business of the com- pany had largely developed.
While the duties of his office, as presi- dent of the above named company, occu- pied the greater part of his time, Mr. Brainerd also found time for other inter- ests. He was a director in the Aetna Fire Insurance Company, the Hartford Aetna National Bank, the Security Trust Com-
pany, the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, the Capewell Horsenail Com- pany, the Smyth Manufacturing Com- pany, Swift & Company of Chicago, and the National Surety Company of New York; was vice-president of the Society for Savings, of Hartford, and was a mem- ber of the loaning committee of the same. He was one of the board of five trustees appointed in 1914 by the United States Department of Justice to take control of the trolley holdings of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in Con- necticut. His death is the third in the board as originally appointed. He was elected a member of the Board of Park Commissioners, May 1, 1909, and served as president of same, and at the time of his death he was commissioner for Good- win Park and a member of the finance committee of the board. He was much interested in the park development of the city. He was a deacon of the Center Church and a member of the prudential committee of the same ; was a member of the board of trustees of the Hartford Theological Seminary, and chairman of its executive committee, and a member of the Hartford Club and the Hartford Golf Club.
Mr. Brainerd married, October 28, 1903, Lucy Morgan Brainard, a daughter of the late Mayor Leverett and Mary B. Brain- ard. Children: Mary Leverett, Lyman Bushnell, Jr., and Lucy Bulkeley. He was survived by his widow, three chil- dren, two brothers, Charles Brainerd, of Middletown, and Asa Brainerd, of West- chester, and one sister, Mrs. Porter Adams, of Westchester.
VARIELL, Arthur Davis, Physician.
The medical profession in the city of Waterbury, Connecticut, is represented
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by a large number of men whose ability and high ideals continue to realize the tra- ditions of the past and make them leaders in all branches of medical science and practice. They are men who are at the head of the profession in research, and apply skillfully, new methods to the prac- tical problems with which they are con- stantly obliged to cope. Among the men who have made their names well known in this group of capable physicians no one is more generally respected and trusted than Arthur Davis Variell. He is not only a most profound student of his sub- ject, medicine, but he is also a keen and sympathetic observer of human nature, a scholar, and a traveler. These attributes help to make him peculiarly competent, and he is recognized as one of the most able diagnosticians of the city.
Dr. Variell is not a native of Water- bury, but was born in the city of Gardi- ner, Maine, August 26, 1868. The name Variell is one of the many variations in the spelling of the original surname Ver- rill, an English name. In the town of Lewes, England, which is the county seat of East Sussex, live several branches of the family. At one period the Verrill family had conferred a baronetcy upon a deserving member for services rendered to the Crown. This title has never been without heir, the present incumbent being Sir William Verrill.
The first period of settlement in this country was 1670, and the New Hamp- shire coast was the locality. Descendants of this early branch still reside in Ports- mouth, New Hampshire, while various other descendants continued the line in Massachusetts and in Maine. The Verrills served their country in the Revolution in the persons of Joseph and Samuel. Little is known of the former, but Samuel was born April 20, 1734, in Gloucester, Mas-
sachusetts. As fifer in Captain John Lane's regiment, his martial strains led many a gallant charge, and it was said of him that he fought even better than he played. Later he served in Colonel Ger- rish's regiment in 1778. Samuel Verrill married Eunice Bray. He died at Port- land, Maine, 1797.
Dr. Variell's grandfather, Albert Variell, married Josephine Call. Their six chil- dren-Moses, Daniel, John, Albert, Carrie and Nathan-are now all deceased. John Smith Variell was the father of Dr. Ar- thur Davis Variell, and was born at Minot, Maine. The greater part of his life was passed in Gardiner, Maine, how- ever, where he was engaged in business until his death at the age of seventy. His wife, who was Miss Julia Hammond, of Auburn, Maine, also died at Gardiner in the year 1900, at the age of sixty-four. Besides Arthur they had but one child, a son Frederick, who died in infancy.
Dr. Variell passed the greater part of his youth in the city of his birth, where he received in the public schools the pre- paratory part of his education. From the high school he entered the Maine Wes- leyan Seminary and College at Kent's Hill. In 1890 he matriculated as a student of medicine in the Medical Department of Bowdoin College, now the University of Maine, at Brunswick. From this college he obtained his degree in 1894. His hos- pital work was done in the Portland City Hospital, in the Post Graduate Hospital of New York City, and also in the hospi- tals of London and Paris. He located first in Watertown, Connecticut, where he practiced medicine until 1907. He then came to Waterbury, where he still con- tinues in practice.
Dr. Variell has been married twice. His first wife was Miss Julia Curtiss, of Woodbury, Connecticut, a daughter of
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Walter S. and Eunice (Averill) Curtis. HALLADAY, Edmund,
Her father, a retired woolen manufac- turer of Woodbury, died in that town in the month of February, 1916. Her mother is still a resident there. Two chil- dren were born to Dr. Variell by his first wife: Doris, who was born May 21, 1897 ; and Curtiss Arthur, born in 1900, and who died at the age of thirteen years. The mother died at Waterbury in November, 1909.
Dr. Variell's second marriage was on November 12, 1913, to Miss Katherine Beckwith Schley, a daughter of Dr. J. Montford and Margaret (Spaulding) Schley. Dr. Schley, a very well known physician in New York City, is now re- tired from active practice. Of the union of Dr. Variell and Katherine (Schley) Variell one child has been born, a son, Montfort Schley Variell, July 3, 1915.
Dr. Variell is regarded in the profes- sional world and, indeed, in all his public relations, as one whose principles are above reproach and whose strict ideals of honor and justice are applied to every detail of his profession and conduct. For all those with whom he comes in con- tact in his professional capacity, in his family life, and, in fact, throughout all departments and circles of life, his cour- tesy, his power of clear-sighted discern- ment and his unfailing concern for the welfare of every one, make him a highly popular figure, a man who truly merits the general esteem and worth of his posi- tion in the community.
Dr. Variell is a member of the staff of Waterbury Hospital; member of the American Medical Association ; member of the County, State and City Medical Societies ; member and vice-president of Waterbury Club ; director of Morris Plan Bank; director and half-owner of the Metal Specialty Manufacturing Company.
Business Man, Public Official.
Edmund Halladay, a native of the town of Suffield, Connecticut, was one of the most prominent tobacco growers and among the well known business men of that place.
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