William McClure Thomson

William McClure Thomson ( b. Springdale, Ohio, 31 December 1806 – d. Denver, Colorado, 8 April 1894) was an American Protestant missionary working in Ottoman Syria. After spending 25 years in the area he published a best-selling description of what he had seen in his travels. He used his observations as a means of illustrating and illuminating passages from the Bible.

Thomson was the son of a Presbyterian minister. He was a graduate of Miami University, Ohio. He landed in Beirut on 24 February 1833. He was only the eighth Protestant missionary from America to arrive in the area. Two of his predecessors had died and two had been recalled. In 1834 he travelled, with his wife, to Jerusalem. In April 1834 he was in Jaffa when the Peasants' Revolt broke out and he was forced to remain there as the rebels took control of the countryside. He was unable to return to Jerusalem until Ibrahim Pasha retook it with 12,000 troops. In his absence his wife had given birth to a son but she died 12 days after Thomson's return.

Following his wife's death Thomson returned to Beirut with his son. There in 1835, with Rev. Story Hebard, he established a boarding school for boys. In August 1840 all the American missionaries in Beirut were evacuated by the USS Cyane. They witnessed the commencement of the naval bombardment of Beirut by a combined British, Austrian and Turkish fleet of 51 vessels under the command of Charles Napier. The bombardment lasted a month and resulted in the retreat of Ibrahim Pasha's army. In the same year fighting broke out between Lebanon's Druze and Maronites. In 1843 he, with Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck, founded a boys seminary at Abeih. There was another outbreak of violence in 1845. Thomson was involved in organising a local truce. In 1851 he moved to Sidon where he remained until 1857, when he returned to America for two years. In 1860 full scale civil war broke out in Lebanon. The conflict lasted sixty days and spread to Damascus. Thomson supervised the distribution of £30,000 of money, food and clothing amongst the thousands of destitute refugees.

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