1847–1909

Rebuffed in ear­ly at­tempts to sell his songs to com­mer­cial pub­lish­ers, Thomp­son start­ed his own pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. He lat­er op­ened a store to sell pi­a­nos, or­gans and sheet mu­sic.

A lyr­i­cist and com­pos­er, he en­sured he would al­ways re­mem­ber words or me­lo­dies that came to him at odd times:

No mat­ter where I am, at home or ho­tel, at the store or tra­vel­ing, if an idea or theme comes to me that I deem wor­thy of a song, I jot it down in verse. In this way I ne­ver lose it.

Thompson took ill dur­ing a tour of Eur­ope, and his fam­i­ly cut short its tra­vels to re­turn home. He died a few weeks la­ter.

His works in­clude:

• New Cen­tu­ry Hym­nal (East Li­ver­pool, Ohio: Will L. Thom­pson, 1904)

• Emurian, pp. 106–09
• Findagrave, ac­cessed 16 Nov 2018
• Hall, pp. 251–54
• Jones, pp. 166–67

1. Christ Is Ris­en
2. Have I Done Any Good?
3. Jesus Is All the World to Me
4. Lead Me Gent­ly Home, Fa­ther
5. Put Your Shoul­der to the Wheel
6. Sinner and the Song, The
7. Softly and Ten­der­ly Je­sus Is Call­ing
8. Tell Me More of Je­sus
9. There’s a Great Day Com­ing
10. ’Tis Time to Say Good-Night

1. Acton
2. While Here
3. Whither Are You Go­ing?