Talk:Charles Thomson

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[edit] Chachomp's claim that Thomason was misspelled as "Thomson"

This edit by "Chachomp" smells for a number of reasons:

1. A claim as brash as this craves a citation, but Chachomp does not provide one.
2. If this were true, I would expect to find some mention of it on the web, yet a Google search on (Charles Thomson Thomason Secretary "Continental Congress") does not find any discussion of the issue.
3. Such a brazen claim demands a detailed explanation on the Talk page, but Chachomp's only explanation was a brief note in the summary comment.
4. The claim that "there are many sites that show the correct spelling" is untrue. A Google search on the terms ("Charles Thomason" Secretary "Continental Congress") yields only 41 hits, while a search on ("Charles Thomson" Secretary "Continental Congress") yields 17,500 hits.
5. He changed all occurrences of "Thomson" to "Thomason", including the name of the image file, thus breaking the link to the image.
6. It is the only edit ever made by "Chachomp".

As a result, I reverted the edit. -- JPMcGrath 09:19, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update

I checked into this further and I am convinced that the correct spelling for the name is indeed "Thomson". And while it does appear that Thomson's name was occasionally misspelled, on such occasions it was usually misspelled "Thompson", not "Thomason".

Fortunately, there are images of many historical documents available on the internet these days. One such collection is the American Memory collection at the Library of Congress.

The vast majority of documents I found were from the Continental Congress and had the printed signature "CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary" at the bottom. Examples of this are:

• An ordinance for the better distribution of prizes in certain cases.
• Plan for conducting the Hospital Department of the United States.
• An ordinance, for amending the ordinance, ascertaining what captures on water shall be lawful.
• An address of the Congress to the inhabitants of the United States of America

However, there were a not-insignificant number that had the printed signature "CHARLES THOMPSON, Secretary" at the bottom. In these cases, the main document page notes that the signature is "Charles Thompson [i.e. Thomson]". Examples of this are:

• The Tory Act : published by order of the Continental Congress, Philadelphia, Jan. 2, 1776.
• In Congress. December 11, 1776 : Whereas, the just war into which the United States of America have been forced by Great-Britain,...

Finally, there are quite a few documents and letters that contain the hand-written signature, presumably written by Charles Thomson himself. In these cases, the spelling is always "Cha Thomson" or "Cha Thomson Secy". For example:

• In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America. A signed copy of a Goddard Broadside of the U.S. Declaration of Independence
• An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States, North-west of the river Ohio.

There are many other examples of Thomson's signature available by going to the American Memory collection and entering "Charles Thomson" in the search box. Unfortunately, some of the collections are not very web friendly - there does not seem to be an obvious way of creating a persistent link to the documents.