Charles Thomson (1729–1824), secretary of the Continental Congress and revolutionary leader, emigrated from Ireland with his family about 1739. Following the death of his father during the voyage, he was placed in the care of a blacksmith in Delaware. By 1743 Thomson began classical studies under Rev. Francis Alison, and in 1750 he became a Latin tutor at Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Academy, later the University of Pennsylvania. Thomson was a member and later a leader of Benjamin Franklin’s “Junto,” the forerunner of the American Philosophical Society. He served as one of the founding secretaries of the latter organization. Having served as a liaison between the local Native Americans and colonial officials, Thomson published An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians from the British Interest (London, 1759). In the years prior to the American Revolution, he became a leader of the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty. After a few largely unsuccessful business endeavors, Thomson served successively as secretary of the First Continental Congress in 1774, the Second Continental Congress, 1775–83, and the Confederation Congress, 1783–89. He was noted for his active role in conducting foreign affairs during his tenure as congressional secretary, but his outspokenness gained him numerous enemies, including John Adams and Richard Henry Lee. Thomson retired from public life when he received no post under the new federal government in 1789. He spent the remainder of his years at Harriton, his estate near Philadelphia, where he worked on translations of the Septuagint and the New Testament, published as The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Covenant, commonly called the Old and New Testament: translated from the Greek, 4 vols. (Philadelphia, 1808–09; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 1474). (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Boyd Stanley Schlenther, Charles Thomson: A Patriot’s Pursuit [1990]; Catalogue of the Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania … 1749–1877 [1877], 14; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 38 vols. description ends , 3:196; An Historical Account of the Origin and Formation of the American Philosophical Society [1914], 17, 19, 24, 34, 43; Paul H. Smith and others, eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 [1976–2000]; Eugene R. Sheridan and John M. Murrin, eds., Congress at Princeton: Being the Letters of Charles Thomson to Hannah Thomson, June–October 1783 [1985]; Robert Patterson to TJ, 24 Nov. 1815; Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 18 Aug. 1824).

For TJ’s philosophy of jesus, see EG description begins Dickinson W. Adams and Ruth W. Lester, eds., Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels, 1983, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 45–122. gassendi’s syntagma: Pierre Gassendi, Syntagma Epicuri Philosophiae (The Hague, 1659). TJ owned a six-volume collected edition of the works of Gassendi, a French philosopher and mathematician (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 4914). qui summum nec metuit diem nec optat: “who neither fears the last day nor prays for it.” TJ here adapted the final line of an epigram by the Latin poet Martial, Epigrammata, book 10, poem 47 (Martial, Epigrams, ed. and trans. David R. Shackleton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library [1993; later printing with variant pagination], 2:360–1). TJ owned two editions of Martial’s works (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends nos. 4496–7).