Thompson, Frederick Bordine

Thompson, Frederick Bordine a missionary of the Reformed Church in America to Borneo, was born in 1810, and united with the Church in New Brunswick, under Rev. Dr. James B. Hardenbergh, at the age of seventeen. His pastor having induced him to prepare for the ministry, he graduated at Rutgers College in1831, and at the Theological Seminary in New Brunswick in 1834. After being settled as pastor of the Church at Upper Red Hook, N. Y., from 1834 till 1836, he determined to devote himself to foreign missionary work, and was sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and the Board of Foreign Missions of his own Church, with the devoted William J. Rohlman, to join the mission in Borneo. He reached Singapore Sept. 17,1838, and labored at Karangan, one of the two stations occupied by the mission (the other being Sambas), for several years, with great industry and devotion to his work, among the Dyaks. His first wife, formerly a Miss Wyckoff, of New Brunswick, died in 1839. In 1840 he married a Swiss lady, Miss Combe, a teacher in the mission, who also died, in 1844. In 1847 a hemorrhage of the lungs compelled him to desist from labor; and, by medical advice, he sailed for Europe with his motherless daughter, to place her with her relatives in Switzerland, and to try the benefit of the change of climate for himself. At first he improved, but the disease returned, and he died Jan. 17, 1848. Thus ended the brief career of one whose piety, talents, and consecration bade fair to place him, if he had been spared, among the very first of modern evangelists to the heathen. He was a grave, quiet, devout, and intensely earnest man. His missionary trials and. last illness were borne with patient submission to the will of God, and with clear views of his acceptance ands peace with the Lord. His labors among the Dyaks, like those of the whole mission, seemed to be fruitless of immediate results; but his name lives in the Church as a power for missions, and perhaps in future ages Borneo will enshrine it among her first evangelists. See Corwin, Manual of the Ref. Ch. p. 489. (W. J. R. T.)