THOMAS, Jesse Burgess, senator, born in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1777; died in Mount Vernon, Ohio, 3 February, 1850. He was a descendant of Lord Baltimore. He removed to the west in 1779, studied law with his brother, Richard Symmes Thomas, in Bracken county, Kentucky, went to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in March, 1803, and practised his profession. In January, 1805, he was elected delegate to the legislature of Indiana territory at Vincennes, and he was speaker of the house in 1805-'8. He was territorial delegate to congress in 1808-'9, then moved to Kaskaskia, and, upon the organization of the territory of Illinois, 7 March, 1809, was appointed by President Madison one of the judges of the United States court. In July, 1818, he was a delegate from St. Clair county to the convention that framed the state constitution, and was its president. At the first session of the legislature he was elected United States senator, and held that post from 4 December, 1818, till 3 March, 1829. In 1820 he introduced the "Missouri Compromise" and secured its adoption. In 1824 he strongly advocated the nomination of William H. Crawford for president, and was delegate to the convention at Columbus in 1840 that nominated his friend, William Henry Harrison. He afterward removed to Mount Vernon. Ohio, where he committed suicide.--His great-nephew, Jesse Burgess, clergyman, born in Edwardsville, Illinois, 29 July, 1832, is the son of Jesse Burgess Thomas (1806-1850), who was for many years a judge of the circuit and supreme courts of Illinois. After graduation at Kenyon college, Gambler, Ohio, in 1850, the son studied law, and was admitted to the bar of Illinois in 1852. In 1853-'4 he studied in Rochester theological seminary, but was forced to leave, owing to impaired health, and engaged in mercantile pursuits in Chicago. He entered the Baptist ministry in 1862, and was pastor of a church in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1862-'4, of the Pierrepont street church in Brooklyn, New York, in 1864-'8, of the 1st church in San Francisco, California, in 1868-'9, and of the Michigan avenue church in Chicago from 1869 till 1874, when he became pastor of the 1st Baptist church in Brooklyn, New York In 1887 he accepted a professorship in the theological seminary at Newton Centre, Massachusetts The University of Chicago gave him the degree of D. D. in 1866. He is the author of "The Old Bible and the New Science" (New York, 1877), and "The Mould of Doctrine" (Philadelphia, 1883)