Waddy Zebedine Thompson Sr. was the son of Samuel Thompson and Martha Patience and the grandson of Samuel Thompson and Nancy Ann Jennings, all of Amelia and Pittsylvania, Virginia. He married Louisa Moseley in 1848 and in a few years began to move West. His first born, Samuel, was born in 1849 at the Child's Plantation in Kentucky; this child did not survive. The next child was Napoleon, born 1852 in Todd County, Kentucky.
By 1853 the family was living in Johnson County, Kansas. Two more babies died in 1853; then Saluda was born in 1856, Johnson County, Kansas; William in 1859 in St. Louis, Missouri; and Waddy Jr. in 1862 in Gardner, Johnson County, Kansas. All survived.
Waddy purchased land in the Delaware Trust, Kansas Territory, in 1856. The purchase was hidden as a cash sale because this part of the territory was not for sale yet. In 1862 Waddy was part of Col. Nugent's Company, taken prisoner once, and served to the end of the war. His ranch was destroyed and he moved his family to Leavenworth, Kansas. Then he and Napoleon joined cattle drives and returned to Virginia to visit family. Louisa died in Leavenworth in 1870 while Waddy was gone. The Catholic Church took all of her possessions and the two youngest boys. Saluda struck out on her own.
When Waddy came back to Leavenworth he couldn't find his family. Eventually he remarried to Martha Francis Smith, had more children, and lived the rest of his life in Texas. In 1898 he was the Justice of the Peace in Brown County, Texas. His sons Napoleon, William, and Waddy all lived in Texas. Waddy Z Jr. worked for the Cotton Belt railroad out of Tyler, Texas. He took them to court and the case went all the way to the State Supreme Court. He and his sons then ran a hack business in Tyler, later trading in horses for cars.
Civil War pension file for Waddy Z. Thompson Sr. Land records from NARA. Unpublished book by Lela Mazelle Hudson Roberts.
Holcombes: Nation Builders. Various census records.
The Robertson, Purcell and related Families by Laura Purcell Robertson.
The Thompson Families of Hanover, Louisa, Albemarle, Goochland, Amelia and Fluvanna Counties in Virginia by Beverly Stercula.
Chronicles of Smith County, Texas, Vol 20, Number 2, winter 1981.
Newspaper articles about the court case.
[?US BLM] Land cash sale, File no. 982, Fort Leavenworth-Delaware Trust Lands, Kansas, 6 December 1856.