author

L. S. (Lucy S.) Thompson

1813–1881

Best known for helping bring Mattie J. Jackson’s life story into print, this 19th-century writer is remembered through a single powerful book tied to the history of slavery and freedom in the United States.

1 Audiobook

The Story of Mattie J. Jackson Her Parentage—Experience of Eighteen years in Slavery—Incidents during the War—Her Escape from Slavery

The Story of Mattie J. Jackson Her Parentage—Experience of Eighteen years in Slavery—Incidents during the War—Her Escape from Slavery

by L. S. (Lucy S.) Thompson

About the author

L. S. Thompson, listed as Lucy S. Thompson (1813–1881), is chiefly known as the writer and arranger of The Story of Mattie J. Jackson, first published in 1866. The book presents Jackson’s account of enslavement, family separation, the Civil War, and escape to freedom, and Thompson is credited on the title page as the person who wrote and arranged the narrative from Mattie’s telling.

The surviving public record is quite thin, but editions of the book identify her as Dr. L. S. Thompson and note that she was "formerly Mrs. Schuyler." That suggests she had a professional identity unusual for a woman of her era, though the details of her medical work and wider life are not easy to confirm from the sources available here.

Because so little biographical information is consistently documented, Thompson is best approached through the work she left behind. Her role in shaping and publishing Mattie J. Jackson’s testimony helped preserve a firsthand story of slavery and survival that continues to be read today.