Thompson, George Franklin.

Military officer, politician.

George Franklin Thompson was born on August 9, 1827, in Medway, Massachusetts. As a young man he worked in a shoe factory, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he was mustered into the 21st Massachusetts Volunteers as a 1st lieutenant. At the end of the war, breveted lieutenant colonel, he was appointed as Inspector for the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, the federal agency that oversaw Reconstruction in a post-slavery South.

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