THOMSON, William McClure, clergyman, born in Springfield (now Spring Dale) near Cincinnati, Ohio, 31 December, 1806. He was graduated at Miami university, Ohio, in 1826, studied at Princeton theological seminary in 1826-'7, and was ordained as an evangelist by the presbytery of Cincinnati on 12 October, 1831. He was sent as a missionary to Syria and Palestine in 1833, remained there until 1849, and was afterward again in the Holy Land from 1850 till 1857 and from 1859 till 1876. He is at present a resident of New York city. Dr. Thomson is accepted as an authority in the department of archaeological research, to which he has devoted himself. His works, besides being great aids to the verification of facts that are related in the Scriptures, and giving evidence of profound learning and critical acumen, have a decided liter-cry value from his skill in reproducing the local color and types and working them into artistic pictures of the past and present life of the Holy Land. He has written " The Land and the Book, or Biblical Illustrations drawn from the Manners and Customs the Scenes and Scenery of the Holy Land" (2 vols., New York, 1859; London, 1860; new ed., with the results of recent explorations, 3 vols., 1880-'6), and "Tile Land of Promise : Travels in Modern Palestine, illustrative of Biblical History, Manners, and Customs" (New York, 1865), and has contributed articles to the " Bibliotheca Sacra" and the " American Biblical Repository." --His cousin, Samuel Harrison, clergyman, born in Nicholas county, Kentucky, 26 August, 1813; died in Pasedena, California, 2 September, 1882, was graduated at Hanover college, Indiana, in 1837, and was elected professor of mathematics there in 1844. In 1857 he was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian church, and the rest of his life was devoted to teaching in the colleges of his denomination or to literary pursuits. He published " The Mosaic Account of the Creation" (1852); " Geology an Interpreter of Scripture "; and pamphlets on "Human Depravity" (1874) and "Our Fall in Adam" (1876).