14 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



Thompson's third attempt at school teaching resulted in a 

 decided change of fortune, for he was called to a town which was 

 to give him a name, a wife and a fortune, the town now known as 

 Concord, New Hampshire, but which had been incorporated in 

 1733 as Rumford, Essex County, Massachusetts. Here again we 

 may, with advantage, quote his own words as reported by Pictet: 



"I was then launched at the right time upon a world which was 

 almost strange to me, and I was obliged to form the habit of 

 thinking and acting for myself and of depending on myself for a 

 livelihood. My ideas were not yet fixed; one project succeeded 

 another and perhaps I should have acquired a habit of indecision 

 and inconstancy, perhaps I should have been poor and unhappy 

 all my life, if a woman had not loved me if she had not given me 

 a subsistence; a home and an independent fortune. I married, 

 or rather was married at the age of nineteen. I espoused the 

 widow of a Col. Rolfe, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Walker, a highly 

 respectable minister and one of the first settlers of Rumford." 



Sarah Walker had married at the age of thirty Colonel Benja- 

 min Rolfe, twice her age, one of the richest and most important 

 men of the country, who had died two years later, leaving her with 

 one son, afterwards Colonel Paul Rolfe. Since she was some 

 thirteen years older than Benjamin Thompson, and so far above 

 the penniless school teacher in social position, it is probable that, 

 as he intimates, she took the initiative in the affair and exercised 

 the privilege of a princess towards a lover of low degree. She 

 took him to Boston before their marriage in the chaise of the late 

 husband (noted in Concord history as the first carriage brought 

 into the place) and gave him an opportunity of indulging for the 

 first time his fondness for fine clothes, for his outfit included a 

 scarlet coat. They drove back through the villlage of Woburn, 

 and stopping at his mother's door, she came out and exclaimed: 

 "Why, Ben, my child, how could you go and spend your whole 

 winter's wages in this way ? " 



Their wedding tour was taken in the fall of 1772 to Portsmouth 

 near which was a grand military review of the Second Provincial 

 Regiment of New Hampshire. Thompson's fine appearance on 

 horseback as one of the spectators attracted the attention of 



