Thomas Clarkson Thompson was born in 1860. His father, Hugh S. Thompson, was an instructor at the Arsenal Academy in Columbia and later at The Citadel in Charleston where he was a Captain of a cadet company during the Civil War.

Thomas Clarkson Thompson grew up in South Carolina during the difficult and turbulent era of Reconstruction which he describes in poignant detail. As an adult living in Dalton, Georgia he witnessed the malevolence and violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Standing virtually alone he faced down the KKK in a year-long contest, an episode that he describes in detail.

During his life he rubbed shoulders with Presidents, Generals, Andrew Carnegie and Joel Chandler Harris.

He began informally writing these short narratives in the 1930's with the intention of passing them among his family. However, when he died in 1938 he had not completing the project. The present volume is as written by Thomas Clarkson Thompson except where obvious typographical errors or punctuation have been silently correctly. Errors of fact, identifications and clarifications have been commented upon in brackets and nearly one hundred footnotes. Genealogical charts have been added to aid clarity when he discusses the extended family.

Thomas Clarkson Thompson was the great uncle of Hugh Thompson Harrington.