Biography
George Thompson was a New Jersey-born abolitionist and ministry student at the Mission Institute in Quincy, Illinois. On July 13, 1841, he crossed into Marion County, Missouri, with Alanson Work and James E. Burr to help enslaved people escape to Canada. Their plan was disclosed and the three were captured, convicted of larceny described as slave abduction, and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. Thompson served the longest of the three, nearly five years, until Governor John C. Edwards pardoned him on June 24, 1846. He wrote the group’s prison narrative and later became a Congregational minister and missionary.
