Author: Thomson, James
Biography:
THOMSON, James (1775-1832: Paterson)
He was born in Kilmarnock, the son of an affluent tanner (his parents’ names are not known) who ensured that he had a good education. He studied for the ministry and was licensed to the Secession Church but did not preach; instead he learned the tanning business and worked as his father’s partner. He married Helen Bruce who had been a governess; they had five children. She died young and his poem “Helen in the Grave” is about her death. In 1803 or 1804 he became commander of the Kilmarnock Sharpshooters. When his father sold his tan-yard, Thomson moved to Edinburgh where he worked for the Scottish Review before taking a commission in the Argyleshire Militia. He went to serve in Ireland but was forced to leave the army because of increasing ill-health as the palsy which eventually deprived him of the use of his limbs took hold. Although he tutored for two years in Roscommon, Ireland, he decided to return to Kilmarnock where he married a widow (surname Lewis; they had two children). In 1817-22 he edited and published the Ayrshire Miscellany, a weekly periodical and the first of its kind in Kilmarnock. Illness kept him confined to home during the last years of his life. He died at Kilmarnock on 23 July 1832. (James Paterson, The Contemporaries of Burns [1840]; ancestry.co.uk 18 Nov. 2020) SR