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Daniel Pierce Thompson (October 1, 1795 – June 6, 1868) was an American author and lawyer who served as Vermont Secretary of State and was New England's most famous novelist prior to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Daniel P. Thompson was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts on October 1, 1795 and moved to Vermont with his family in 1800. He was raised in Berlin, Vermont, and graduated from Middlebury College in 1820. He then moved to Virginia, where he taught school, studied law, and attained admission to the bar before returning to Vermont to become an attorney in Montpelier, Vermont.
Influenced by James Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott, he wrote historical adventure and romance novels, many of which feature life in Vermont.
In 1835 he authored May Martin, or the Money Diggers. Its favorable reception established his popularity, and he specialized in Vermont during the Colonial and Revolutionary War eras.
His writings include a satirizing of Anti-Masonry, The Adventures of Timothy Peacock (1835); The Green Mountain Boys (1840); Locke Amsden, or the Schoolmaster (1845); The Shaker Lovers, and Other Tales (1848); Lucy Hosmer, or the Guardian and the Ghost (1849); The Rangers, or the Tory's Daughter (1850); The Tales of the Green Mountains (1852); Gaut Gurley, a Tale of the Umbagog (1857); The Doomed Chief, or King Philip (1860); and Centeola (1864). Thompson also authored 1859's History of the Town of Montpelier.
New England's most famous novelist of the 1840s and 1850s, Thompson's work was responsible for imprinting the story of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in the public's consciousness. His ability to tell action and adventure stories plainly and quickly made his novels popular well into the 1900s, and many of his books are still in print.
Thompson died in Montpelier, Vermont on June 6, 1868. He was buried at Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier.