Guide to the George Jarvis Thompson Papers,
1906-1957.

Professor of law.

George Jarvis Thompson received a B.S. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1909, an LL.B. from Harvard University in 1912 and an S.J.D. in 1918. From 1914-1917 he taught Anglo-American Law at Peiyang University, now Tianjin University in Tianjin China. While there he was admitted to the bar of the United States extraterritorial court for China. In 1917 Thompson served as one of the blind-folded drawers of draft numbers for the first draft in World War I. He was appointed Thayer Teaching Fellow at Harvard, 1918-1919, also practicing in Boston with public utility law firms. From 1919-1926, he held a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh, and then went to Cornell University where he taught courses in Procedure, and later in Contracts and Business Regulation. Thompson made his chief contribution to the field as associate editor of the eight-volume REVISED EDITION OF WILLISTON ON CONTRACTS, 1936-1938. At Cornell, he was also active in the American Association of University Professors, Phi Kappa Phi, and the Cornell-in-China program. Thompson's wife Ruth served as the Secretary of the American Red Cross Committee in China during their stay in China.

Collection includes student papers from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School; lecture notes, passports, and correspondence (including a chart of Chinese kinship nomenclature and law diagrammed by a student) from Thompson's tenure at Pei Yang (Tianjin) University in Tientsin (Tianjin), China; correspondence and other papers relating to the Cornell University Law School, with letters from former students, some of whom were serving in the Armed Forces in World War II; correspondence, bills, and legal papers relating to a textbook on contract law on which he collaborated with Professor Samuel Williston; papers and articles by Thompson, including "Introductory Lectures in Procedure," 1934; personal correspondence, and correspondence about Indian relics which Thompson collected and cases involving Indian land claims. Also, diplomas and certificates.

Additional photographs and letters relating to the Thompsons' trip to China, and a typescript Report on the Condition of the Military and Civil Prisoners of War in Siberia by R.A. Burr, dedicated to Ruth Thompson.