Author: Thompson, Jane Tonge
Biography:
THOMPSON, Jane, formerly TONGE (1786-1851: ODNB)
She was the daughter of Susanna and John Tonge of Boston, Lincs. In 1804 she met a bank clerk, also of Boston, at a ball. He was Pishey Thompson (1785-1862), a Unitarian. On 6 Nov. 1807 she married him, giving her year of birth as 1787. The marriage was childless but apparently contented. Pishey Thompson combined banking with bookselling in Boston. In 1818 Jane left for America and her husband followed in 1819. They settled in Washington DC, where he took US citizenship and set up as a bookseller and publisher. In 1824 he fathered a son with the daughter of a Unitarian missionary, Mary Wright, who had emigrated with them; the relationship was acknowledged and accepted, and the boy was sent to be brought up by relatives of his mother in England. Thompson was declared bankrupt in 1841, however, and he and his wife returned to England. Though he was able to find work in Washington again between 1843 and 1846, they returned definitively in 1846 and settled in Stoke Newington, where he completed the history of Boston (Lincs.) that he had worked on for many years. He outlived his wife by over a decade. They are both buried in the Unitarian burying-ground of the New Gravel Pit churchyard in Hackney. A summary and extracts from Jane Thompson's "American Diary" of 1839-40 are available on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website. ("Thompson, Pishey," ODNB 25 Nov. 2020; "Jane Tonge Thompson," Wikipedia 25 Nov. 2020; ancestry.com 25 Nov. 2020; shakespeare.org.uk 25 Nov. 2020)
Other Names:
- Mrs. Jane (Tonge) Thompson