Thompson, William Tappan, 1812-1882

found: NUCMC data from Univ. of Ga. Hargrett Rare Book and Ms. Libr. for His Papers, 1847-1881(William Tappan Thompson, 1812-1882; Georgian writer and journalist; founder of Augusta Mirror and editor of Savannah Daily Morning News)

found: LC man. auth. cd.(hdg.: Thompson, William Tappan, 1812-1882; Major Joseph Jones, pseud.)

found: New Georgia Encyclopedia, via WWW, June 10, 2020(William Tappan Thompson (1812-1882); born August 31, 1812 in Ravenna, Ohio; died March 24, 1882 in Savannah, Georgia; writer of humorous stories; he was best known for creating the fictional character Major Joseph Jones, a down-to-earth Georgia planter who wrote dialect letters about his courtship, rural life, and travels; these letters, originally appearing in periodicals that Thompson edited, were published in Major Jones's Courtship and Major Jones's Sketches of Travel; Thompson was one of a group of nineteenth-century southern writers whose humorous and realistic tales about the backwoods produced a literature that was distinctively American; many of Thompson's earliest sketches appeared in the Augusta Mirror, a literary magazine that he established in 1838; within the next few years he was editor or coeditor of three literary periodicals: the Family Companion and Ladies' Mirror in Macon; the Southern Miscellany in Madison; and the Western Continent in Baltimore, Maryland; in 1850 Thompson became the founding editor of the Savannah Daily Morning News; except for a short period during the Civil War, he edited this newspaper until his death)