Anna Boynton Thompson

Anna Boynton Thompson, teacher and student of philosophy, was born on September 10, 1848, in Portland, Maine, the daughter of Harriot Boynton (Sawyer) and William A. Thompson. Harriot Boynton Thompson and William A. Thompson had met in Monson, Mass., his home town, where Harriot Boynton Thompson was attending Monson Academy while William A. Thompson was studying for the ministry. They were married in October 1843 and left shortly thereafter for the West under the auspices of the American Home Missionary Society. William A. Thompson was ordained in Denmark in the Iowa Territory and they settled into a one-room cabin in Troy, southwest of the Des Moines River.

In 1848 Harriot Boynton Thompson returned to Portland for the birth of Anna Boynton Thompson. On her return to Iowa, they moved first to Fairfield and in 1851 to Port Byron, Illinois. There William A. Thompson built a proper house on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Coming back from a circuit preaching tour in May 1852, William A. Thompson drowned in the river. Harriot Boynton Thompson sold their land but kept the house as rental property and returned to her husband's family in Monson. After working as matron at Wheaton Seminary (Norton, Massachusetts) and at the Boston Children's Friend Society, Harriot Boynton Thompson opened a boarding house for schoolteachers in Boston, where Anna Boynton Thompson and her younger sister, Mary Francis, attended school.

Rental money from the Illinois house and her Boston boarders enabled Harriot Boynton Thompson to send her daughters to study in Europe for two years, 1871-1873. After their return home, both began their long teaching careers. Mary Francis Thompson taught science in Boston and Anna Boynton Thompson history. In 1878 Anna Boynton Thompson joined the faculty of Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass. She remained there as head of the history department for over forty years. During this time she also attended Radcliffe College, studying with professors Josiah Royce, Albert Bushnell Hart, and George Santayana, and earning her AB (1898) and AM (1899) degrees; received an honorary D. Lit. from Tufts University in 1900; traveled and studied abroad; learned Greek; was an active member of the New England History Association; and in 1895 published The Unity of Fichte's Doctrine of Knowledge, Radcliffe College Monograph Series, number 7. At Thayer she started an elementary school (Thayerlands); urged the school to buy adjoining property, contributing a year's salary to help pay for it; and donated money for several scholarships.

Harriot Boynton Thompson wrote her will in 1897. She left her estate "in trust" to her daughters but made them promise to use the principal and interest only if it was necessary for their well-being. They in turn were to leave everything to Radcliffe College, to be used to "erect a building ... for the use of the women students ... the building to be called Boynton Thompson Hall." Harriot Boynton Thompson died in 1900. The sisters honored their mother's wishes and were both benefactors of the college; a wing of Cronkhite Graduate Center was named Harriot Boynton Thompson Hall.

Anna Boynton Thompson died in 1923, Mary Francis Thompson in 1933.

http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00199 I.S. 1/9/2018