Posted on: Clark Co. Wi Biographies Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Wi/ClarkBios/10762 Surname: Tompkins, Lindsay, Weston, de Lindsay, William the Conqueror, Raymond ------------------------- 1891 Biographical History of Clark and Jackson Counties WI Jones Tompkins, of section 34, township 26, range 2 west, town of Eaton, Clark County, was born in Stillwater, Saratoga County, New York, on the Hudson River, twelve miles east of Saratoga Springs, June 2, 1826. His father, Elias Tompkins, a native of the same place, was a farmer by occupation, and a Jacksonian Democrat, politically. He was a son of Moses Tompkins, who was one of the men who helped clear the ground where Saratoga Springs now are. His employer was a Mr. Cadwell. Our subjects mother, also a native of New York, has twenty-two children, fourteen of whom reached maturity, and seven are still living. Our subject has one half-sister still living, three full sisters and three half-brothers. Jones Tompkins left home at the age of nineteen years, and first worked several years at rafting logs from different points to New York during the summers, and in the fall would buy and ship stock and grain to New York City. He came to La Crosse in the spring of 1859, and the next winter worked on bridges in Arkansas and Mississippi. In 1860 he prospected some, and then returned to Henry County, Illinois, where during the summer he had charge of the cutting of a broom-corn field. In 1860 he went to Davenport, Iowa, and worked in the saw-mills of his brother-in-law, Edward Lindsay, and in the fall of 1862 came to this county, where he commenced work in the pineries. He next became manager of the timber land of S.F. Weston, who owned 28,000 acres in this county. In the spring of 1866 Mr. Tompkins settled on his present farm, which was then covered with timber. The county was at that time mostly tax-title land, and when he found a good forty-acre tract he would purchase, and he now owns 640 acres, where he is engaged in general farming and stock-raising, and also deals in real estate. Mr. Tompkins was married January 7, 1850, to Martha E. Lindsay, a daughter of Robert D. Lindsay, whose ancestors have preserved the history of the family for hundreds of years, beginning with William de Lindsay, in 1116, who was a son of Baron Baldric de Lindsay, the Anglo-Norman, contemporary with the Conqueror, William, the Norman. Mr. and Mrs. Tompkins have had four children, only one of whom still survives, James E., who married Frances Raymond, and they have two children: Earl and Jones. Mr. Tompkins has been chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and also of the County Board three years. Politically he is a Democrat, but votes for the man rather than the party. Besides being a successful farmer and real estate dealer, he is a breeder of registered Jersey cattle and Oxford-down sheep, and is supplying this community with this excellent stock as fast as he can raise them.