Honey Grove, Texas

Lucy Clemmons Thompson

Published in the Honey Grove Signal-Citizen about 1938
Written by H. P. Allen, assisted by W. J. Erwin

The subject of this sketch was born in Guntersville, Ala., May 28, 1841. She was the daughter of Samuel Finley and Evergeen Rainey, sister of Stephen Decatur Rainey, a pioneer settler of Marshall, Tex., whose wife was Mary Russell. Lucy Finley was the oldest of a family of eight children, her father, Samuel Finley, dying of pneumonia before the Civil War. Her mother was killed by a bomb shell while the Yankees were shelling the town of Guntersville, Ala. Lucy had previously been sent from the home with the younger children and a few valuables to find safety in the mountains, while her mother remained to gather up a few more things. On leaving the home with a Dr. McNany and his paralized mother, who were refugees at that time, a bomb burst, killing Mrs. Finley and Dr. McNany, leaving his helpless mother and the family of children to the care and protection of the "Black Mammy" and slaves until Capt. Stephen D. Rainey, her uncle, could come from Texas to the children, who had been cruelly robbed of a mother, home and all their possessions.

Lucy Finley was married at the palatial home of Capt. Rainey in October 1867, to J. Q. Thompson, also a native of Alabama, who had opened a general merchandise store in Marshall, Texas, after the war. Having been reared in the Old South, she had much to learn when she moved to a farm with two children, never having washed or cooked a meal, but she put her shoulder to the wheel, carrying well her part of the burden through the trying days of reconstruction. She became a finished pupil in all lines of home work, looking after her own household with greatest care and always having time to look after the sick and the needy at any time of night or day, always using every opportunity to help add something to the family treasury. In order to do this, in the year 1882 she opened a private school around her fireplace with five pupils, which grew until it was necessary to move to a rent house, where many of the prominent citizens of Honey Grove and other cities began their education. Mrs. Thompson lived to be 81, passing away in 1923, and now sleeps beside her husband in Oakwood.

Written February 1938, by Ella Thompson Russell

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