Adin Ballou admired Gilbert Thompson even though he broke one of the major tenants of the Practical Christian religion.
When Adin Ballou and his followers settled in Hopedale, they followed a set of guidelines as part of their newly-founded religion. Their Standard of Practical Christianity included temperance, equality, morality, and staunch support for the abolition of slaves. In fact, Hopedale occasionally housed escaped slaves, and Gilbert would have known this from his childhood – his family moved to Hopedale in 1849.
The Hopedale community was “non-resistant,” described in the Standard as an inability to “employ carnal weapons nor any physical violence whatsoever…not even for the preservation of our own lives.” When the Civil War began in April 1861, Adin Ballou could not bring himself to relinquish those founding ideals, even to free the slaves.
Yet Ballou admired the men who went off to fight. He called Daniel Messinger, who served in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, a “patriotic, industrious, peaceable, intelligent, kind-hearted man, deservedly respected in all the relations of life,” and noted that Ezekiel Wood Anson “lost his life for his country.” In 1879, Ballou told a meeting of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union Army veterans’ group, that they had done “great and noble service. So did your comrades, whose graves you annually decorate with flowers.”
“I have respect enough for you, military gentlemen and sympathizers, to believe that you understand my position, my ideas, my sentiments, and my exposition of the subject discussed. I trust, therefore, that our respect for each other is mutual and will remain forever steadfast,” he said.
Gilbert Thompson seems to have held a special place in Adin Ballou’s affections. Gilbert attended the Hopedale Home School and later taught drawing to the students. He also apprenticed in Ballou’s printing office for several years. But when the Civil War started, Gilbert felt the need to serve. This was no surprise – military service was in his ancestry. Deborah Sampson was his great-grandmother – she fought as patriot Robert Shurtleff during the Revolutionary War, hiding her gender and eventually earning a military pension for her bravery. Gilbert enlisted in November, 1861, ending up in the U.S. Engineer Battalion. This was not some backfield regiment – he was often under fire working to erect bridges or dig ditches. And his artistic prowess came in handy as he learned topography and map-drawing for the military.
After the war, the government knew a good thing and kept Gilbert on. He surveyed fresh battlefields in Maryland and Virginia, maps of which were published in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. He also did surveying around the Great Salt Lake in Utah for the U.S. Geological Survey. Gilbert was an intelligent and cautious man, and ahead of his time. As a supervisor, he kept his workers honest by using his own thumbprint on pay slips. He felt this would prevent forgery, and he is credited with being the first person in the country to use fingerprints in that manner.
Gilbert also left a gift to military historians. During his three years of war service, he kept a diary. It was published as My Journal 1861-1865. In fact, he was a prolific writer, map maker, and historian, a combination that led him to be one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.
“Mr. T. has had a successful career in life. He is not only a man of settling intellectual capabilities, but of generous sentiments, noble moral principles, and of unswerving integrity. As a civil and military engineer, he has won distinction and golden commendations,” Adin Ballou wrote in his History of Milford. Gilbert Thompson died in June of 1909, outliving his mentor by less than 20 years.
Issue Date:
April, 2019
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