Cumberland County, Maine - Hon. William Widgery Thomas, Jr.
**********************************************************************
USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any
format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons
or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent
of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact
the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has
given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free
access. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb

This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by:
C. Wendland SilverDrusilla@aol.com
Copyright (c) 2005 by C. Wendland
Caitlin's Gold Award Project, Girl Scouts USA, Rio Grande Girl Scout Council,
El Paso, Texas
**********************************************************************

Biography
Hon. William Widgery Thomas, Jr.
Biographical Review
Cumberland County, Maine
Boston
Biographical Review Publishing Company
1896
Page 206-210


Hon. William Widgery Thomas, Jr., of Portland, Me., ex-Minister to Sweden and
Norway, is a gentleman who has acquired distinction in the diplomatic service,
and has won laurels as an author and public speaker. He is a son of the
venerable Hon. William W. Thomas, Sr., of whom a special sketch with portrait
and some account of his ancestry appears in this volume, and a brother of
General Henry G. Thomas, United States Army. On his mother's side he is
descended from Dr. John Goddard, of New Hampshire, who declined a United States
Senatorship.

William W. Thomas, Jr., was born in Portland, Me., in 1839. He received his
earlier education in the public schools of this city, entered Bowdoin College in
1856, and was graduated with the highest honors in 1860. During his college
course, at the age of eighteen he taught a winter district school for three
months and a half in a little red schoolhouse near the shore of Cape Elizabeth.

Immediately after graduation be commenced reading law, but in the spring of 1862
left his studies, and, as United States Bearer of Despatches, carried a treaty
to Turkey. He became Vice-Consul-general at Constantinople, then Acting Consul
at Galatz in the Principality of Moldavia, and before the close of the year was
appointed by President Lincoln one of the thirty "war consuls" of the United
States, and sent to Gothenburg, Sweden. For his services as Consul he received
from Secretary William H. Seward "the special thanks of the Department of
State." Resigning his Consulship, he returned to America in the autumn of 1865,
was admitted to the bar in 1866, and at once won distinction as an advocate.

Mr. Thomas, during his three years' residence in Sweden, acquired the Swedish
language, and became familiar with the history, manners, and customs of the
people. On his return to his native land he persistently advocated Swedish
immigration to Maine, and presented the first definite, practical plan for the
purpose. The legislature of 1870 passed an act authorizing this plan to be
tried. Mr. Thomas, receiving the appointment of Commissioner of Immigration,
proceeded to carry it into effect. He visited Sweden, recruited a colony of
fifty-one Swedes, sailed with them over the ocean, led them up the St. John
River in flatboats, and on July 23, 1870, founded the prosperous settlement of
New Sweden in the primeval forest of his native State. Here he lived in a log
cabin with his Swedish pioneers for the better portion of four years, directing
all the affairs of the colony until its success was assured. The colony has
rapidly increased, and has constantly attracted Swedish immigration into Maine
and the other New England States. In 1895 Maine's Swedish colony numbered
fifteen hundred souls, owning real and personal property worth three-quarters of
a million dollars, while fifteen hundred more Swedish immigrants were settled in
other parts of the State. New Sweden appropriately celebrated the decennial and
the quarter-centennial anniversaries of its settlement, and on both occasions
Mr. Thomas was the orator of the day.

The city of Portland elected Mr. Thomas a member of the Maine legislatures of
1873, 1894, and 1875. In the first session he made his mark as an able and
courageous debater, and in the two later sessions he presided over the House as
Speaker. He was also Senator from Cumberland County in 1879, but declined a
renomination. In 1875 he was President of the Maine State Republican Convention,
and in 1880 a delegate to the memorable Republican National Convention at
Chicago, which nominated General Garfield for the Presidency. On July 4, 1883,
he delivered the oration at the quarter-millennial celebration of the founding
of Portland by his own ancestor, Cleeve. Mr. Thomas had already been appointed
Minister Resident to Sweden and Norway; and on July 19, the eve of his departure
for his foreign post of duty, the sympathy and good will of his fellow-citizens
found expression in a public dinner given to him under the auspices of the
Cumberland bar and the merchants of Portland.

Mr. Thomas resided at Stockholm as American Minister until the close of
President Arthur's administration in 1885. He was the first Minister to Sweden
to address the King in his own language, the first to hoist the American flag at
Stockholm, and the first to effectively assist in starting a line of direct
steamships between Sweden and the United States.

On leaving the Northland, Mr. Thomas was honored by a public farewell banquet
given him by many of the first citizens of the Swedish capital at the Pavilion
of Hasselbacken in the Royal Deer Park. The Pavilion was decorated with American
flags, and the band of the Royal Second Life Guards played American national
airs.

In 1887 he again visited Sweden, and married Dagmar Elizabeth, daughter of
Ragnar Tornebladh, Knight and Nobleman, Member of the Upper House of the Swedish
Parliament, and Manager of The National Bank of the Kingdom of Sweden. The year
after, Mr. Thomas was orator at the great Swedish celebration at Minneapolis,
where more than forty thousand Swedes assembled to commemorate the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary of the first Swedish settlement in America, New Sweden
on the Delaware, founded by Gustavus Adolphus. This was the largest gathering of
the Swedish race that has ever taken place on the American continent.

In March, 1889, Mr. Thomas was appointed by President Harrison Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden and Norway. He and his
young Swedish wife were welcomed back to the Northland with distinguished honors
by both King and people. During his second term he helped secure the appointment
of a Swedish jurist as Chief Justice of Samoa under the Treaty of Berlin, and a
Norwegian statesman as member of the Tribunal of Arbitration between the United
States and Great Britain on the question of the fur seal fisheries in Behring
Sea. On September 14, 1890, on the deck of the American man-of-war "Baltimore,"
lying in the harbor of Stockholm, Minister Thomas, in an eloquent address,
delivered the honored ashes of the great Swedish-American, John Ericsson, to the
King and people of Sweden.

During Mr. Thomas's second term a freer market for American products was opened
in Sweden, the Riksdag voting in 1892 to reduce the duties on both grain and
pork by one-half. It was at his own suggestion, made to the Department of State
in 1890, that Mr. Thomas received instructions under which he commenced
negotiations with the governments of the United Kingdoms that resulted in the
full and satisfactory extradition treaties of 1893 between the United States and
both Sweden and Norway.

Mr. Thomas is an attractive public speaker, and from the political "stump" or
lecture platform has addressed large audiences in nearly all the Northern States
in both the English and Swedish languages. He is also widely known as an
entertaining writer. He published in 1869 a translation of an historical novel,
"The Last Athenian," from the Swedish of Victor Rydberg, for which he received
the special thanks of the King of Sweden and Norway; and he has written many
spirited articles for Harper's Monthly, the Cosmopolitan, and other magazines
and periodicals. His greatest literary work, however, is "Sweden and the
Swedes," a richly illustrated volume of seven hundred and fifty pages, published
in 1892 in both America and Sweden, printed in both the English and Swedish
languages. This book has met with a flattering reception and large sales on both
sides the Atlantic, and is characterized by the Swedish press as "the most
correct and at the same time the most genial description of Sweden and its
people ever published in any language."

Mr. Thomas is a keen follower of the chase and a lover of all outdoor manly
sports. He has laid low the bear in the backwoods of Canada and the elk in the
forests of Sweden. On September 29, 1893, when hunting in company with the
Emperor of Germany and King Oscar on Hunneberg Mountain in Sweden, Mr. Thomas
had the good luck to shoot four noble elk, as large and grand as the moose of
America. During this hunt Emperor William was exceedingly gracious toward the
American Minister, frequently chatting and jesting with him in the most
unconventional and democratic manner; and soon after his return to Berlin the
Emperor sent to Mr. Thomas his portrait "as " (to use the Emperor's own words)
"a token of special sympathy and a souvenir of the personal meeting with you on
the Hunneberg hunt." The painting is inscribed by the Emperor's own hand, "
Wilhelm, Imperator Rex."

Mr. Thomas was recalled from the Swedish and Norwegian mission by President
Cleveland in 1894. At a farewell audience Mr. Thomas was presented by King Oscar
with his portrait, a magnificent life-size painting, personally inscribed by the
King. On his return to America in October, he was welcomed back to his native
land by a public reception and banquet, given in his honor by the leading
Swedish-Americans of the State of New York at the house of the Swedish
Engineers' Club in Brooklyn.

During the winter of 1894-95 he delivered addresses upon "Sweden and the Swedes"
in more than fifty cities and towns, in sixteen different States of the Union.
He was everywhere greeted by large and enthusiastic audiences, frequently
numbering several thousands. In many cities he was honored by public receptions
and banquets, United States Senators and Governors of States presided at his
meetings, and his entire lecture tour from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains
was one continued ovation.

Of Mr. Thomas it can with truth be said that no other native American ever
acquired so intimate a knowledge of Sweden and the Swedes. None ever
accomplished so much by both tongue and pen in making Sweden and the Swedes
known and honored throughout America, and none is more widely known or more
highly respected by the Swedes in both the Old World and the New.

Mr. Thomas is a member of the Maine Historical Society, the Swedish Geographical
Society, His Majesty King Oscar's Shooting Club, the Royal Swedish Yacht Club,
the Idun (a Swedish literary club), the Portland Fraternity Club, and he was one
of the founders of the Portland Yacht Club.

Mr. Thomas has led a life of many-sided activity and of honorable achievement.
Though but of middle age, he has been lawyer, legislator, founder of a
community, Consul, diplomat, orator, and author; and in all he has been a
success. He has contributed to the common weal, and has been an important factor
in social advancement.

An excellent portrait of this practical humanitarian may be seen on a preceding
page.