By Grace Flood Giloy
My grandfather, George Thompson, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850. His parents were George Thompson and Mary Harvey, a close descendant of Wm, Harvey, the famous physician who discovered the circulation of the blood including the function of the Muscular Organ (heart), and the complete circuit of the blood through the body returning to the heart. He was awarded the title of Lord Harvey by King James I of England.
My grandfather was fifteen months old when they came to America, crossing the Atlantic in a sailing vessel. The trip took eleven weeks. It was a very windy and stormy trip. They landed in Toronto, Canada with their three children in 1851. Two more children were born there. They came by oxcart to Duluth, then to St. Paul, took a river boat down the Mississippi, not knowing where they were going, but looking for a place to live. On the boat they heard people talking about the fertile land in Iowa, so they got off the boat at Lansing, Iowa.
They found a place to stay with a young couple who had a two room log house, while great grandfather sought for a place to homestead. He found some land near Lansing and homesteaded it. It had a partially built house on it. There five more children were born.
Grandfather George grew up there. As a teenager he worked on a riverboat. When he was twenty-one he came to Black River Falls and worked for Mr. Brockway, a lumberman.
There he courted and married Julia Levis whose parents owned much land in Old Iron Town, including the land where the Ore Mine is. She was the daughter of Samuel and Mary Levis. She had two sisters, Mary and Alice and two brothers, John and George.
My grandparents lived at Old Iron Town where my mother and some of the older children were born. Then they homesteaded a plot of land on the banks of the Black River in Halcyon. There grandfather organized the Alcyon School District. Grandmother Julia was a school teacher before she was married.
Their only neighbors were across the Black River, Indians whose chief was Tom Thunder. Jacob Stucki was missionary to the Indians and lived among them.
My grandparents had eight children. Their names were Mamie, Frank, Ben, Daisy, bess, Nell, George and Harry. Harry is the only member still living.
In 1904 they moved to Wrightsville. Several of the older ones were married by them. They lived on the Ben Wright farm until 1917, then moved to Melrose where they operated a boarding house until Julia died of anemia in 1921. George lived with his sons and till he passed away at the home of his daughter Bess and son-in-law Wilfred Flood in Wrightsville in 1943.