The Brown County Historical Hall of Fame will induct King Thompson and his brother, Ben, on October 29 at 6 pm at the Georgetown United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall.

King and Ben Thompson’s ancestry in Brown County started with Captain Daniel Feagins, a Revolutionary War veteran floating down the Ohio River with several other families in 1786.

They stopped at Limestone, now Maysville, Kentucky. Simon

Kenton warned them to not go any further down river for fear of being attacked by Indians. Feagin and his family stayed at Kenton Station.

The others went on and were massacred.

In 1796 the Feagins family crossed the river and settled on a farm west of Georgetown. Capt. Feagins and his wife, Violet, had 19 children. Violet lived until age 102. One of their children, Susan, married Edward Thompson, who was King and Ben’s great-great Grandfather.

King was named for his grandmother, Jane King, and Ben was named for his grandfather, Benjamin Sells, a well -known Georgetown gunsmith.

King and Ben’s grandfather and uncles built four mills in the White Oak Creek Valley, one of which is the Schuster Mill on St Rt 221. They also built two mansions that are residences today.

King and Ben’s parents were Frank and Ella Thompson. They had a farm east of Wahlsburg which had been part of the Gist Settlement.

Frank was a farmer and bought and sold tobacco. King was born in 1876 and Ben in 1878. They worked the farm alongside the former slaves and hauled freight to and from the White Oak farms and mills to Higginsport.

King and Ben attended a one-room school near Georgetown.

They paid the teacher $30.00 as a bribe to go to school. They then went to

Georgetown High School and graduated in 1894 and 1896, respectively. Following his graduation from high school King taught two years at Sardinia and Decatur.

King attended The Ohio State University and Ben attended Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio. King’s father gave him a horse and wagon to go to Columbus which he used to start a freight business while still in college. He made enough money to buy a rooming house. King was president of his sophomore class. It is believed he used Charles Frebis’ name for a street in Columbus for a community plan. Charles Frebis was from Georgetown and was Nancy Purdy and Jane Sininger’s grandfather.

King graduated from Ohio State in 1901.

Immediately upon graduation King Thompson acquired property near the Campus and formed a subdivision. He continued to buy more land and developed several subdivisions in northern Columbus. Before long Ben joined King in the real estate business. King was the visionary and the wheeler dealer and Ben was the stable office worker, good at details and business mainstay. Ben often supplied the framework and blueprint for King’s dreams and was a key player in their most ambitious project.

In 1913 the brothers purchased 840 acres between the Scioto River and the Olentangy River near the Ohio State campus. King envisioned an upscale residential garden community with the streets following the contours of the land.

In a 1914 King issued a brochure that included his vision for the community. “…..Upper Arlington is not the result of a sudden inspiration ——-it is the outcome of a careful study of the needs of Columbus for protected residential property in the immediate future. The developers’ experience of twelve years in subsiding property……has demonstrated the advantage to the lot owner of protective restrictions……In addition to the conventional form prohibiting against the use of the residence lots for commercial purposes, and the erection of flats and double houses,

etc., there will be included….the most careful provisions… regarding the open spaces to be left permanently vacant. The intention is to set such a high standard as will establish the character of the entire district.”

King Thompson also wrote in an early promotion: “confident that a large number of people in the future will desire more sunlight and flowers around their homes, more beauty in the exterior of their homes and more comfort inside.

We have undertaken the creation of a new residence section for Columbus.” They also built shopping centers in Upper Arlington. Today, Upper Arlington is a city of 35,000 and continues to follow the vision of the Thompson Brothers.

King established a major real estate firm that is now affiliated with Coldwell Banker.

Ben Thompson passed away in 1949 and King Thompson in 1960. The Brothers Thompson were possessed of intuition, creative vision, and a strong work ethic surely developed growing up in Brown County. They are worthy of being inducted into the Brown County Historical Hall of Fame.

Much of the content of this article was taken from King Thompson’s own biography, a written presentation by his nephews, Martin Peter Sayers MD, and Daniel G. Sayers MD, and a history of Upper Arlington, “A Cherished Past, A

Golden Future” published by the Upper Arlington Historical Society.