Coy J. Thompson is well known as one of the extensive farmers of Solon township and as a public-spirited citizen whose aid is never withheld from movements of a beneficial character. In the working out of his career, his honorable manner of conducting his affairs has gained him very creditable success, as well as standing among the substantial men of his community and confidence by the public in general. Mr. Thompson was born at Lamont, Ottawa county, Michigan, March 2, 1863, son of Volney and Catherine (Phillips) Thompson, both families being old and honored ones of this state. Volney Thompson was born at Pinkney, near Ann Arbor, Mich., and was a young man when he removed to the vicinity of Lamont. As a youth he had learned the trade of shoemaker, which he followed for some years, and then became a fruit-grower, a vocation in which he found success during a long period, and eventually entered the ministry, establishing the Wesleyan church at Solon Centre. He continued to be engaged in ministerial labors until he reached his seventieth year, at which time he retired from active work and from that time until his death, at the ripe age of eighty years, lived quietly in the enjoyment of the comforts which his long and eminently useful career had brought him. Reverend Thompson married Catherine Phillips, daughter of James and Catherine Phillips, of New York, who. came to Michigan in the early days. Three children were born of this union. Coy J. Thompson was given no particular advantages in his youth, save for those accruing from attendance at the Lamont public schools, where he completed his education. However, he had been brought up to traits of honesty and habits of industry and thus entered upon his career with a proper appreciation of life's rewards and responsibilities, an advantage which assisted him over many of the rough places of his first few years of endeavor. His first employment was at lumbering, a business in which he rose to be foreman, and for a number of years he continued in this line, but eventually turned his attention, as do many lumbermen, to farming. He secured through purchase his present farm, a well-cultivated tract of land which lies in section 13, Solon township. Mr. Thompson furnishes gravel to the township for road purposes. He is one of the men of his locality who help in movements which his judgment tells him will be beneficial to the township, and in politics he is a stanch Republican. As a fraternalist he belongs to Cedar Springs Lodge No. 213, F. & A. M., and he and Mrs. Thompson are active in the Eastern Star work of the order. Mr. Thompson married Miss Eva Dunton, daughter of Reuben and Harriet Dunton, of Solon township, formerly well known farming people of this vicinity and highly respected, but now deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson are the parents of a son, Volney, a graduate of the Cedar Springs High School, who spent a short time in Montana, but now resides at home, assisting his father, and awaiting his call to the colors for service in the United States National Army.
Source: Grand Rapids and Kent county, Michigan, Volume II, by Ernest B. Fisher, published by Robert O. Law Co., Chicago, 1918; Pgs. 369-370
