Gilbert Thompson

Gilbert Thompson (21 March 1839 – 8 June 1909) was an American typographer, draftsman, topographer, and soldier. Biography Early life and Civil War Born on March 21, 1839, in Blackstone, Massachusetts, his father had helped combat the Dorr Rebellion in neighboring Rhode Island, and his great-grandmother was Deborah Sampson. At age ten his parents moved to the Utopian community of Hopedale, Massachusetts. In Hopedale he trained to become a printer, and his first job was as a printer's assistant in a newspaper influenced by Adin Ballou. In 1861 he left to Boston, where he enlisted into the Union Army to fight in the American Civil War. The enlistment clerk wrote his profession as painter rather than printer when he signed up. This caused him to be changed from being an infantryman to becoming a combat engineer. He joined as a private in 1862 and became a corporal in the Regular Battalion of Engineers serving until May 1865. Wheeler Survey After the war, Thompson went to Washington D.C., where he became associated with the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1872 he joined the Wheeler Survey, under Lieutenant George Wheeler. He would stay on the Wheeler survey for the next seven years, making friends with the likes of Henry Wetherbee Henshaw, Rogers Birnie, and William Henry Rideing. In 1875, he led an expedition to Spirit Mountain in Nevada, of which he did the first topographical sketch. In 1879 he went into the Great Basin with Grove Karl Gilbert and John Wesley Powell.