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Thomas Clarkson Thompson was born in 1860. His father, Hugh S. Thompson, was an instructor at the Arsenal Academy in Columbia and later at The Citadel in Charleston where he was a Captain of a cadet company during the Civil War. Thomas Clarkson Thompson grew up in South Carolina during the difficult and turbulent era of Reconstruction which he describes in poignant detail. As an adult living in Dalton, Georgia he witnessed the malevolence and violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Standing virtually alone he faced down the KKK in a year-long contest, an episode that he describes in detail. During his life he rubbed shoulders with Presidents, Generals, Andrew Carnegie and Joel Chandler Harris. He began informally writing these short narratives in the 1930's with the intention of passing them among his family. However, when he died in 1938 he had not completing the project. The present volume is as written by Thomas Clarkson Thompson except where obvious typographical errors or punctuation have been silently correctly. Errors of fact, identifications and clarifications have been commented upon in brackets and nearly one hundred footnotes. Genealogical charts have been added to aid clarity when he discusses the extended family. Thomas Clarkson Thompson was the great uncle of Hugh Thompson Harrington.

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"Thomas Clarkson Thompson was born in 1860 in Columbia, SC. He grew up in poverty during Reconstruction. T.C. Thompson moved to Chattanooga in 1893 as a representative for the Atlanta Manufacturing Company. In 1898, Thompson became manager of the National Life Insurance Company for Tennessee. He was elected mayor of Chattanooga, TN in 1909 and served until the end of his second term in 1915. At the end of his second term, Thompson did not seek re-election. In 1917, Thompson became a civilian aid to the Adjutant General of Fort Oglethorpe and served in the position for two years. After returning to private business, Thompson's lifelong interest in improving the lives of children continued, and he worked to establish a children's hospital. Working through the Civitan Club, Thompson privately raised funds for the hospital before asking the city and county to issue $250,000 in bonds for the project. During the construction of the eighty-nine bed Children's Hospital, Thompson insisted that distinction not be made in patient areas so that those without means were not separated into ""charity wards."" T.C. Thompson served on the board of the Childrens' Hospital until his death in 1938. Six years later, the board of trustees voted to change the name of the hospital to the T.C. Thompson Childrens' Hospital. Hugh T. Harrington is an independent researcher and author. His articles have appeared in Journal of Military History, Georgia Historical Quarterly, America's Civil War, Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution and others. He was editor of Journal of the American Revolution. He is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars."

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