Frederick M. Thompson, superintendent of the city schools of Horton, and an educator of long and successful experience, is a native of Kansas, and his family have been identified with this state since the territorial period.
His father, Samuel C. Thompson, who is now living at Leavenworth at the venerable age of eighty-two, came out to Kansas in 1856 and for a time was identified with the frontier Town of Leavenworth and later removed to Springdale. where he was employed by the firm of Russell Waddell and Major in their big sawmill twelve miles west of Leavenworth on “Big Stranger.” He was with that firm, one of the most prominent in the early plains transportation service, until 1860. After he was married he settled in that community, bought a homestead right to 160 acres and farmed this and lived there in prosperity and comfort until 1912, when he retired to the City of Leavenworth. He was born in Winchester, Virginia, in the famous Shenandoah Valley in 1835, and spent the first twenty-one years of his life in that locality. He is a democrat and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. During the war he was with the Kansas State Militia and helped repel Price’s raid through Missouri and Kansas. In 1860 Samuel C. Thompson married Miss Adaline Chinn, who was born in 1846 in Newmarket, Platte County, Missouri Of their eight children Frederic M. Thompson is the youngest. Georgia, the oldest, died in 1900 at Pasadena, California, the wife of C. F. Huddleston, who is still a resident of Passdens and is sanitary commissioner of that city. Kate, the second child, is the wife of John Meinken, a farmer at Jarbalo, Kansas. Ida married John Welch, foreman for the Missouri Valley Bridge Company at Leavenworth. Mary is the wife of Neumaries Welch, also a resident of Leavenworth and connected with the Klemp furniture factory. Arthur, the oldest son, is a farmer near the old home place at Springdale. Nellio died at the age of two years. Emmett is a farmer at McLouth, Kansas.
Frederick M. Thompson was born at his parents’ home at Springdale, Kansas, September 5, 1882, was educated in the public schools of his native village, and for one year attended Campbell College at Holton, Kansas. He then entered the State Normal School at Emporia and pursued a more or less intermittent course in that institution covering altogether five years. In the meantime he began teaching in Leaven-worth County, his first term being during the winter of 1901-02. He taught country school three years, one years at Easton, Kansas, was a student in the Emporia Normal from 1906 to 1910, and from 1910 to 1914 was superintendent of schools at Nortonville, Kansas. During 1914-15 Mr. Thompson was again in the State Normal School and at the end of his course received the degree A. B.
He came to Horton in 1915 as superintendent of schools and is now giving capable direction to that city system, having three schools under his supervision, a staff of twenty-nine teachers and an enrollment of 1,000 scholars.
Mr. Thompson had also acquired some business interests and is a stockholder in the Kansas Life Insurance Company and the Aetna Building and Loan Association at Topeka. He is a member of the Kansas State Teachers’ Association, is a democrat, a member of the Congregational Church and is affiliated with Nortonville Lodge No. 273, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Caswell Consistory of the thirty-second degree Scottish Rite at Kansas City, Kansas, Abdallah Temple of the Mystle Shrine at Leavenworth, and belongs to the Order of Toltee at Topeka, Kansas, a social club of Masonry for both the Seottish and York Rites. Mr. Thompson and family reside on Main Street in Horton. He was married in June, 1913, at Oakaloosa, Kansas, to Miss Maud Nincehelser, a daughter of William J. and Minnie (Wendorf) Nincebelser. Her parents still live in Oskaloosa, where her father is in the livery business.
Mr. Thompson is descended from a family that originated in Scotland and was transplanted to Virginia during colonial days. His grandfather, Robert Thompson, was born in Loudoun County, Virginia, and was also identified with the pioneer life of the Missouri Valley. He located in Jackson County, Missouri, in 1858, his previous experience having been as a Virginia farmer and planter, and in 1859 he came to Kansas and followed farming until his death in Leavenworth County in 1876.