William Herman Thompson was born April 2, 1894 in Hickman County, Tennessee. In 1916 he married Odie Harris. According to his World War I draft records he was 5’8” and had black hair and black eyes. His parents were James and Sarah Luvina Thompson.
According to Wm H. Thompson, Jr. his father Herman Thompson was a great salesman and could trade for anything. After he spent a summer selling Bibles with his brother, Howard, Herman recognized the best way to make a sale. While Howard would talk about the text of the Bible, Herman would ask about crops and weather. He said this worked to sell more Bibles than his brother! Herman said this experience taught him what a home was worth, what a dollar was worth, and what a friend was worth.
Herman first bought a diary on Lickton Pike in 1930 and then bought the Neuhoff farm on Whites Creek Pike in 1941 and converted it to a dairy farm called Country Maid. By 1950 he had started another dairy farm in Springfield, Tennessee.
His sons, Reece and Bill, grew up doing any menial chores they could – packing silos, lifting bales of hay from fields to barns, working on early morning delivery trucks, and at times as a child, staying out of the way! They carried on the tradition of the dairies until Country Maid was sold in the mid 1960’s to Purity Milk Company.
Reece and father, Herman Thompson
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