page_title: Henry Adams Thompson
section_title: Early life and educational career
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Adams Thompson / Early life and educational career
caption_attribution_description: English: Otterbein University building about 1900
context_page_description: Henry Adams Thompson was an American prohibitionist and professor who was the vice-presidential nominee of the Prohibition Party in 1880.
  Thompson was a native of Pennsylvania, but spent much of his career in Ohio. He became a member of the United Brethren church and taught mathematics at several United Brethren colleges in the Midwest. Thompson served as president of Otterbein University from 1872 to 1886. Much of his time as college president was devoted to improving the financial standing of the school during the economic depression that followed the Panic of 1873.
  Initially a Republican, he became an early member of the Prohibition Party. His attempt at election to the vice presidency in 1880, running on a ticket with Neal Dow of Maine, was the party's best showing to date, but they still placed a distant fourth to the eventual winners, James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. He ran for office under the Prohibition banner several other times before and after 1880, all without success.
context_section_description: Henry Thompson was born in Stormstown, Centre County, Pennsylvania on March 23, 1837, the son of John Thompson and Lydia Blake Thompson. John Thompson was the manager of an ironworks in Centre County, and later owned a general mercantile business in Stormstown. Lydia Blake was a Quaker from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, who was disinherited when she married Thompson, a Presbyterian. John Thompson was politically active and served two terms as county sheriff. He was active in anti-slavery and temperance causes, in both of which his son Henry followed him.
  Thompson graduated from Jefferson College (now Washington & Jefferson College) in 1858 with a bachelor's degree, and studied for two years at the Western Theological seminary (now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary). In 1861, he was appointed professor of mathematics at Western College (now Leander Clark College), a United Brethren-affiliated college in Shueyville, Iowa, and taught there for one year. The United Brethren, a pietist church that arose first among Pennsylvania Germans during the Great Awakening, was one of the earliest churches in the United States to embrace abolitionism. By Thompson's time, they had also joined the fight for the prohibition of alcohol, though most did so from within the Republican Party and did not join the small single-issue Prohibition Party.
  The next year, 1862, Thompson began teaching mathematics and natural science at another United Brethren school, Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. That same year, he married Harriet Copeland, an artist who also taught at Otterbein. They had three children: Jessie, Clara, and Louis; two of the three became medical doctors. In 1867, Thompson left Otterbein to become superintendent of schools in Troy, Ohio. After four years in that position, he returned to teaching, serving again as a mathematics professor in Westfield College, a United Brethren school in Westfield, Illinois. 
  In 1872, Thompson was elected president of Otterbein University, and remained in that position until 1886. He received a doctorate in divinity from Otterbein the following year. As president, Thompson continued to teach and delivered speeches around the country on school or church business. Thompson took office shortly before the financial Panic of 1873, with the result that his primary concern as president was keeping the college funded. In this he was successful, although the college had to borrow money to stay afloat until the economy recovered. After the initial debt was incurred, Thompson worked to raise donations to pay it off more quickly. He also worked to attract new professors to teach at Otterbein, improving both the quality of education and the school's reputation among scholars. Thompson was involved in organizing the General Board of Education of the United Brethren Church, which served as a coordinating body for the schools affiliated with the church.
caption: Otterbein University building as it appeared in Thompson's tenure
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