“As long as the new moon returns in heaven a bent bow, so long shall the fascination of archery keep hold of the hearts of men.”
-The Witchery of Archery by James Maurice Thompson
Before the Civil War, about 1845, a Primitive Baptist minister named Thompson from Indiana via Kentucky made the decision to move to Gordon County at Crane Eater. The minister was wealthy, owned a small plantation, established a church, and achieved some local prominence.
He and his wife had two sons, James Maurice, born in Indiana in 1844, and William Henry, born at Crane Eater in 1846. Their father and mother, who was very well-educated herself, hired tutors who provided them with a very good education, and they were apparently not very strict because the boys were allowed to roam the wild woods and fields.
They made friends with an old man named Thomas Williams, who became their mentor. Maurice describes Williams as “an old hermit of a fellow whose cabin stood in the midst of a vast pine forest that bordered my father’s plantation in the beautiful hill country of northern Georgia . . . Williams was an incomparable archer, and delighted in practicing with his favorite weapons: but a strange timidity so mastered him that no amount of pleading on our part could prevail on him to make any public exhibition of his skill.”
Williams taught them what he knew of nature and the hunting skills he had learned. Maurice later writes that they learned how to go into the woods with only a knife and return with a very good bow and arrows.
When the war came the two boys were on the cusp of manhood. They apparently were exuberant supporters of the Confederate cause and served three years as privates in the army. They fought in several key battles including the Battle of the Wilderness, Pennsylvania Courthouse, and Gettysburg. One or both of them is thought to have gotten aboard the locomotive Texas at Calhoun and participated in the Great Locomotive Chase. I can’t really say, but I do know that Maurice was a scout. He writes a lot about it years later, especially about the lawlessness of war. He said he did things as a scout he preferred to keep secret.
He did describe a funny incident during the war. He was trying to take a shortcut around Calhoun on a donkey when Sherman’s army had almost reached the edge of the city. Maurice did not realize they were so close until he entered a large field by the Oostanaula River. When he saw them he spurred the donkey to run as fast as it could, which wasn’t nearly enough for him, to escape his dilemma.
After the war, the Thompson brothers stayed in Calhoun a couple of years where they studied surveying, engineering, and law. Maurice had a penchant for writing and submitted his first article for publication while living there. In 1867 Maurice and probably Will began a study of the botany and bird populations of Lake Okeechobee in Florida.
Afterwards the two brothers left Gordon County and moved to Crawfordsville, Indiana, where they married sisters. They opened a law office there in 1871, and Maurice worked as an engineer on a local railroad. He also served in the Indiana legislature. But eventually they parted with Will moving to Seattle in 1889 where he became a prominent lawyer. Maurice stayed behind and made a name for himself in Indiana. The two stayed in frequent contact with one another.
After the war Confederate soldiers could not own guns so the Thompsons took it in stride by returning to their boyhood roots. Maurice wrote a book entitled The Witchery of Archery (1878) which is considered a classic. The brothers were enthusiastic supporters of the sport, champion archers, and are credited with a revival of interest in it in the second half of the 19th century.
In 1878 they helped found the National Archery Association. M. R. James, founder of Bowhunter magazine, says they were America’s first widely recognized bow hunters. He calls them the “Patron Saints of American Archery.”
In addition, Maurice and to a much lesser extent Will began to gain a reputation as writers. Maurice wrote essays that were published in the New York Tribune, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s Monthly, including some on bow hunting in Georgia and Florida. He also gained nationwide recognition as a poet and novelist.
In all he published 22 volumes of essays, poetry, and several novels. They included one, How to Train in Archery: Being a Complete Study of the York Round, co-authored with Will. His most successful book was the novel Alice of Old Vincinnes, which was a nationwide best seller at the time of his death in 1901.
So why is he not remembered for his contributions to American literature? Well he’s really not that good except for being a local colorist. Basically he died in 1901 at the height of the 19th century and his popularity, literally and literarily. But he got swept away in the tsunami of 20th century modernism and was soon forgotten.
Maurice says that he made another significant contribution to American literature. At one time his “back door neighbor” in Crawfordsville was the author Lew Wallace. Maurice says that Wallace gave him a first draft of the novel Ben Hur to critique. Maurice liked it but said it lacked excitement. Wallace re-wrote the manuscript and gave it back to Maurice. He said, “It was much improved. The sea battle and the chariot race had been added.”
Several of Maurice’s works can be read online at Project Gutenberg.
By TED SMITH