Introduction

Biography

Catherine was the daugh­ter of Si­mon Cor­ne­li­us Gilc­hrist and Eli­za­beth Wolf.

On No­vem­ber 16, 1841, she mar­ried Jo­seph P. Thomp­son in Will­iams­port (Penn­syl­van­ia?). Joseph was a bi­shop of the Af­ri­can Me­tho­dist Epis­co­pal church, so some sour­ces give Ca­ther­ine’s name as Mrs. Bi­shop Thomp­son.

She was an ex­cep­tion­al wo­man in many re­spects—ami­able, pi­ous, de­vout. She was a great or­gan­iz­er, and had won­der­ful ex­ec­utive abi­li­ty.

Her great­est de­light was in the Sun­day school work. She de­vot­ed hours of ear­nest thought and pray­er to the most ef­fec­tive means of at­tract­ing the youth­ful mind to the truths of the Scrip­tures.

In the work she was ear­nest and per­sever­ing, and by her win­ning man­ner cap­ti­vat­ed the hearts of the child­ren, drew them to­ge­ther, and her la­bors were al­most al­ways boun­ti­ful­ly re­ward­ed.

In Church so­cie­ty work Mrs. Thomp­son oc­cu­pied the high­est place among her sister la­borers; al­ways will­ing, al­ways rea­dy, no sac­ri­fice seemed too great for her to make for the good of the cause.

She was long hon­ored as the pre­si­dent of the Sons and Daugh­ters of Con­fer­ence of her Church (Af­ri­can Me­tho­dist Epis­co­pal Zi­on), and was al­ways ac­tive in per­fect­ing plans for its ad­vance­ment.

The Bi­ble was her book of books, and her fa­mi­li­ar­ity with its con­tents was as re­markable as her ma­ny fa­cul­ties. In­deed, in depth of learn­ing she ab­ly coped with ma­ny of the cler­gy of her day.

She was a valu­able help­mate to her hus­band, and ma­ny long hours found them to­ge­ther dis­cuss­ing in­tri­cate scrip­tur­al doc­trines.

During the dark days of slav­ery her mind was ri­vet­ed on the work of al­lay­ing the suf­fer­ing of her un­for­tu­nate fel­low-crea­tures. Ma­ny cle­ver schemes she de­vised in ef­fect­ing their es­cape from bond­age. The in­ci­dents she and the bi­shop have re­lat­ed have been most thrill­ing in de­tail.

The last of­fi­cial place Mrs. Thomp­son held was as trea­sur­er of the La­dies’ Home and For­eign Mis­sion­ary So­ci­ety of the con­nect­ion.

Hood, pp. 216–18