Couple with ties to the Declaration of Independence, Woodrow Wilson, and astrophysics. Fund at The Trust supports scientific research.
Charles G. Thompson (1906-1986)
Alice Bemis Thompson (1909-1972)
Alice Bemis and Charles Goodrich Thompson were childhood playmates at their families’ summer homes in Tamworth, New Hampshire. Twenty-five years later, they married in the town’s Episcopal church.
Charles, a lawyer, amateur astronomer, and Pierce-Arrow motor car enthusiast, was born April 22, 1906, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, to Mary Hinckley Huntington and William Goodrich Thompson, an eminent trial lawyer in the Northeast. Charles’ mother was a descendant of Simon Huntington Sr., who died of smallpox in 1633 on the voyage from London to the New World and Boston, where his widow settled with their five children. Mary’s family tree includes Samuel Huntington, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Alice was born on March 5, 1909, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, to Albert Farwell Bemis and Faith Mary Gregg. Alice’s father was a prominent businessman, a director of the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, and served on the National Industrial Conference Board. He died in 1936 after falling from the window of a third-story hotel room in Arizona while taking photos of the Grand Canyon.
Charles graduated from Harvard in 1927 and joined the law firm of Tibbetts, Lewis & Rahd in New York City. Alice attended Buckingham School, a private girls’ school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1932 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She and Charles were married June 17, 1933, and moved to Riverdale, in the Bronx. They had five children—one son and four daughters.
In 1936, the young couple created the Fund for Astrophysical Research to support research in astronomical and astrophysical projects in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Theodore Dunham, Jr., a well-known astronomer who also held research positions in medicine and surgery at Harvard, was the scientific director of F.A.R. from its founding until his death in 1984. In 1986, his daughter, Mary Huntington Dunham, married Charles and Alice’s son, William Goodrich Thompson.
In addition to his interest in astronomy, Charles was passionate about Pierce-Arrow automobiles. The auto company went out of business in 1938, but Charles had a private workshop and mini museum in South Tamworth, where he stored—and restored—the classic cars. In the early 1970s, he supervised the restoration of former President Woodrow Wilson’s Pierce-Arrow and delivered it to the presidential museum in Staunton, Virginia.
For many years, Alice was associated with the King-Coit Children’s Theatre and School in New York City. The school offered drawing, painting, dance, and acting classes for children ages 5 to 15. It closed in 1959.
Alice Bemis Thompson died November 19, 1972. In her memory, Charles donated 150 acres of wetlands, forest, and meadows near the Town of Sandwich to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. Since then, NH Audubon has expanded the “forever wild” Alice Bemis Thompson Wildlife Sanctuary, home to more than 200 species of birds and mammals and more than two miles of trails.
Charles died in May 1986 in Tamworth.
After operating as a private foundation for decades, F.A.R. was dissolved, and its assets were transferred into the Fund for Astrophysical Research at The New York Community Trust.
The fund supports scientific investigations and research, primarily in astronomy, astrophysics, and allied subjects.
Grants have advanced the study of the stars at Apache Point Observatory at New Mexico State University, the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Kenwood, California, and Lehigh University, among others.