Will L. Thompson

THOMPSON, Will Lamartine. b. Smith’s Ferry, Pennsylvania, 7 November 1847; d. New York City, 20 September 1909. Thompson was the son of a prominent merchant banker and state legislator. He attended Mount Union College, Ohio, the Boston School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston. He then studied at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, Leipzig, Germany. In 1875 he settled in East Liverpool, Ohio, and founded the Will L. Thompson Co., a music publisher and retail sales company. In 1891 Thomson opened a branch in Chicago, then the center for revivalist and evangelical publishing. The two businesses together formed one of the largest retail music outlets in the United...