Lyndon Center in Caledonia County, Vermont — The American Northeast (New England)
Elizabeth Rowell Thompson
Photographed By Cosmos Mariner, July 11, 2019
1. Elizabeth Rowell Thompson Marker
Daughter of Samuel Rowell, a farmer and Mary Atwood. Being one of twelve children and brought up under hardships and privations, Elizabeth had little schooling. At age nine she went out to work as a domestic servant at twenty-five cents a week.
Elizabeth Rowell was both beautiful and kind. At age twenty two she met and married Thomas Thompson of Boston, Massachusetts, a wealthy graduate of Harvard College and collector of valuable fine arts. Together they did much to alleviate the sources of human misery for others.
After Mr. Thompson’s death she was interested in and gave to find the causes of yellow fever, provide business pursuits for the heads of families, improve medical and scientific research, help child widows in India, and improve and establish the right relations between capital and labor.
She founded the town of Longmont, Kansas, in the Rocky Mountains and gave to Congress Carpenter’s painting of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln in the presence of his Cabinet.
She would have been a remarkable woman at any time but was one of the great women of her time.
Died in Littleton, New Hampshire, July 20, 1899
Roger B. Tyler
Benjamin T. Fawcett
William B. Tyler
Trustees U/W Thomas Thompson
this page online
Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Charity & Public Work • Science & Medicine • Women. A significant historical date for this entry is February 21, 1821.
Location. 44° 32.309′ N, 72° 0.914′ W. Marker is in Lyndon Center, Vermont, in Caledonia County. Marker is on Institute Circle just north of College Road, on the left when traveling north. Marker is located along the sidewalk in front of the Lyndon Institute, just north (right) of the front entrance. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 168 Institute Circle, Lyndon Center VT 05850, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within 5 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies. District 6 Schoolhouse (about 700 feet away, measured in a direct line); Lyndon Town House (about 700 feet away); Vail Campus (approx. 0.2 miles away); Theodore N. Vail (approx. 0.6 miles away); Lyndon Veterans Memorial (approx. 0.7 miles away); Site of Lyndon's First Town Meeting (approx. 1.3 miles away); Mountain View Farm (approx. 4½ miles away); Wheelock (approx. 4.8 miles away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Lyndon Center.
Regarding Elizabeth Rowell Thompson. Elizabeth Rowell Thompson provided seed money for the Chicago-Colorado Colony in Longmont, Colorado not Kansas, as indicated on this marker.
Photographed By Cosmos Mariner, July 11, 2019
2. Elizabeth Rowell Thompson Marker
Also see . . .
1. Elizabeth Rowell Thompson. Elizabeth Thompson was an important patron of the campaigns for women's suffrage and the Christian temperance movement. In the 1870s, she also supported experiments in communitarian living. She provided the seed money for the Chicago-Colorado Colony in Longmont, Colorado, designed in 1871 to provide a cooperative, self-supporting community for residents of overpopulated urban areas. (Submitted on July 3, 2020, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.)
2. Woman of the Century - Elizabeth Rowell Thompson. Her expenditures to aid worthy men and women in getting education amount to over one-hundred-thousand dollars, and her other benevolent enterprises represent an outlay of over six-hundred-thousand dollars. She paid ten-thousand dollars for the expenses of the Congressional committee appointed to study the yellow-fever plague in the South. She gave liberally to support the Women's Free Medical College in New York City. In Salina County, Kansas, she gave six-hundred-forty acres of land and three-hundred dollars to each colonist settled on it. (Submitted on July 3, 2020, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.)
3. History of the Thomas Thompson Trust. The Thompson Trust is one of the oldest charitable foundations in the United States (and presumably therefore in the world), exceeded in
Photographed By Cosmos Mariner, July 11, 2019
3. Lyndon Institute
Credits. This page was last revised on February 16, 2023. It was originally submitted on July 3, 2020, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida. This page has been viewed 224 times since then and 21 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3. submitted on July 3, 2020, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
